Christer kiselman esperanto: its origins and early history
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Published in: Prace Komisji Spraw Europejskich PAU. Tom II, pp. 39–56. Ed. Andrzej Pelczar. Krak´ ow: Polska Akademia Umieje˛tno´ sci, 2008, 79 pp. pau2008 CHRISTER KISELMAN ESPERANTO: ITS ORIGINS AND EARLY HISTORY Abstract. We trace the development of Esperanto prior to the publi- cation of the first book on the language in 1887 and try to explain its origins in a multicultural setting. Influences on Esperanto from several other languages are discussed. The paper is an elaborated version of parts of the author’s lec- ture in Krak´ ow at the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences, Polska Akademia Umieje˛tno´ sci, on December 6, 2006. 1. The first book on Esperanto and its author The first book on Esperanto (D r speranto 1887a) was published in Warsaw in the summer of 1887, more precisely on July 14 according to the Julian calendar then in use (July 26 according to the Gregorian calendar). It was a booklet of 42 pages plus a folding sheet with a list of some 900 morphemes. It was written in Russian. Soon afterwards, a Polish version was published, as well as a French and a German version, all in the same year (Dr. Esperanto 1887b, 1887c, 1887d). The English version of the book appeared two years later, in 1889, as did the Swedish version. The author of the book was only 27 years old at the time. His complete name, as it is known now, was Lazaro Ludoviko Zamenhof, registered by the Russian authorities as Lazar Markoviq Zamengof (Lazar Markoviˇc Zamengof ). His given name was Elieyzer in Ashkenazic Hebrew, Leyzer in Yiddish, and Lazar (Lazar ) in Russian. Maimon (1978:49) gives them as Eliezer, Lejzer, and Lazar. According to the custom of his time, he later added a Gentile name starting with the same letter, Ludwig. He was born in Bialystok on December 3, 1859 (December 15 in the Gregorian calendar) and lived in the street known in Yiddish as di yatkegas ‘Street of the Butcher Shop’; in Polish Ulica ˙ Zydowska ‘the Jewish Street’. In 1919 the street was renamed Ulica Zamenhofa (Maimon 1978:17).
2 Christer Kiselman Bialystok was at the time a town in the Grodno Governorate, in Russian Grodnenska guberni (Gr´
odnenskaya gub´ erniya) of some 16,544 inhab- itants of which 11,288 (68.2 %) were Jewish (statistics from 1860; Maimon 1978:19). The others were Poles, Russians, Germans, Lithuanians, and Tatars (Maimon 1978:20). The languages Ludoviko grew up with were Yiddish, Russian, Polish and German, and then of course Hebrew in the synagogue. The town had an important textile industry, the third after Moscow and L´ od´ z in the Russian empire (Maimon 1978:19). The family moved to Ulica Nowolipie in Warsaw in December, 1873, when Ludoviko was fourteen. What was his first language? He wrote in a letter in 1901 that his “parental language” (mother tongue) was Russian, but that at the time he was speaking more in Polish (Zamenhof 1929:523). However, all other evidence points to Yiddish as his mother tongue and first language. In all probability, his mother Libe (Liba) spoke Yiddish and his father Mark spoke Russian to him, perhaps in addition to Yiddish. So one could say that his mother tongue was Yiddish, his father tongue Russian. At any rate, he was (at least) bilingual already in his early childhood. How could he claim that his first or maternal language was Russian? Did he lie? I think the explanation lies in the fact that he called Yiddish not a language but a “jargon,” or “dialect.” He learnt this language as a small child, but he then wanted to hide the fact, and said that the more prestigious Russian was his first (real) language. We may find this strange, but in his efforts to make Esperanto accepted as an international language, he felt that it was important not to mention his Jewishness publicly, al- though privately he was very clear about this. So he lied in some sense, but he did not lie in another sense, with his own definition of the term language. Ludoviko’s father Mark Fabianoviˇ c Zamenhof (in Yiddish Mortkhe- Fayvish; in Ashkenazic Hebrew Mordechay, 1837–1907) founded at the age of twenty a private Jewish school in Bialystok and also gave private lessons in German and French there. He obtained a position as teacher of Geog- raphy and Modern Languages in Bialystok (Holzhaus 1969:7). After the move to Warsaw he became employed as a teacher of German in a Real- gymnasium in Warsaw (Maimon 1978:144). This was rare for a Jew: in Warsaw there where only two other Jewish teachers with a similar posi- tion. Most remarkably, he worked since 1878 as a censor under the Czarist regime, censoring newspapers and books in Yiddish and Hebrew (Holzhaus 1969:11). He was not fighting for Jewish nationalism; he was for integration ESPERANTO: ITS ORIGINS AND EARLY HISTORY 3 and assimilation of the Jews, and wanted his children to speak Russian and to adopt Russian customs. Of course Ludoviko also learnt Polish and German in addition to Yid- dish and Russian. As a schoolboy, he studied classical languages. In those days, this term applied not only to Latin and Greek, but included Hebrew and Aramaic as well. Four classical languages! He learnt Hebrew from his father. He learnt French and also English, although his English, in his own words, was not very good. He was probably familiar with Lithuanian, Grodno and Vilnius (Wilno) being the two “Lithuanian provinces” of the Russian Empire. He certainly learnt Volap¨ uk, another planned language, which had appeared in 1880, seven years before Esperanto but when he had already begun working on an early variant of the language. So all in all, it is probable that he knew, to various degrees, some fourteen languages: Yiddish, Russian, German, French, Polish (all these he spoke fluently), and then Hebrew, Latin, Greek, Aramaic, English, Volap¨ uk; possibly to some degree Italian and Lithuanian, and, most importantly—Esperanto! At the time when the first book on Esperanto was published, all books in the Russian Empire were censored, and Zamenhof’s book had to pass the censors like any other publication. There were two decisions by the authorities: first the permit to publish, made on the basis of a submitted manuscript, and then, when the book was printed, the permit to release it, made on the basis of a check that the printed version did not deviate from the approved manuscript (Boulton 1980:32). Zamenhof’s book was allowed to be published on May 21, 1887 (June 2 in the present calendar). The second decision, to release it, was then made on July 14 (July 26 in our calendar; Ludovikito 1982:37). Marc Chagall was born in the same month in Vitebsk, some 500 kilometers from Bialystok. For the Polish version, the second to appear, these dates were July 9 and August 25 (July 21 and September 6). Between these two dates, the author married on July 28 (August 9 in the Gregorian calendar). His wife was Klara Silbernik (1863–1924) from Kaunas (Kowno in Polish). They had met in Warsaw when she was visiting her sister there, although it is not clear exactly when they met (Maimon 1978:116). The year 1887 was indeed a busy one for the author. I have not been to Bialystok 1 but I have been to Kaunas and visited the house where Klara lived. Built in brick, it is still in good shape. The experience of standing in that house was very touching. 1 The wooden house where Ludoviko lived no longer exists; it was torn down by a decision of the Magistrat ‘City Government’ in 1959 (Maimon 1978:18). 4 Christer Kiselman Zamenhof died in Warsaw on April 14, 1917, at the age of 57, and his body was buried in the Jewish cemetery there. Dr. Esperanto The author of the four books was given as Dr. Esperanto. So one started to speak about “the language of Dr. Esperanto,” then “the language of Esperanto,” finally just “the language Esperanto.” However, it was not difficult to guess who was behind this pseudonym, for the address of the author was given in the first book as: ADRES AVTORA:
Gospodinu D ru L. Zamengofu dl d-ra
speranto v VARXAV . THE AUTHOR’S ADDRESS: To Mr. Dr. L. Zamenhof for dr. Esperanto in WARSAW. No street address or zip code was necessary in those days. 2. Czarist Russia To give you an idea of the situation in Czarist Russia of that time, let me quote from the biography written by Marjorie Boulton, an outstanding Esperanto writer and a member of the Esperanto Academy: During Ludovic’s childhood the 1863 Polish uprising occurred; Bialy- stok was in the province of Grodno, one of the two ‘Lithuanian prov- inces’, controlled by the notorius ‘Murayev the Hangman’, who stifled Polish national aspirations and deadened the schools with stultifying formalism. The Polish University of Warsaw was closed and replaced by a Russian one; in the Lithuanian provinces the use of Polish lan- guage was prohibited. (Boulton 1980:4) Concerning censorship, Georg Brandes (1842–1927), the Danish literary critic and scholar, reports from his visits to Poland in the 1880s and 1890s, and I quote again from the book by Marjorie Boulton: [...] he found that any book not known to the Customs at the Polish frontier had to be sent to the Warsaw censor; that, when he gave a
ESPERANTO: ITS ORIGINS AND EARLY HISTORY 5 public lecture, not only was the text censored in advance, but an official sat in the hall with a notebook to check that the lecturer added nothing new; [...] (Boulton 1980:5) It is under these circumstances that the four books on a revolutionary new language appeared. The Jews in Russia were not allowed to live where they wanted. Bialy- stok was situated in the Pale of Settlement, in Russian qerta osedlosti (ˇ cert´
a os´ edlosti), in Polish strefa osiedlenia, where Jews were allowed to live. This zone was created by Catherine the Great in 1791 and lasted for 126 years, until 1917. The percentage of Jews was highest in the Warsaw province, 18.12 %; second highest, 17.28 %, in the Grodno province where Bialystok was; and 4.13 % in the whole Russian Empire (statistics from 1897; Boulton 1980:5, Wikipedia). In Bialystok itself, as already men- tioned, the Jews were in majority: 68.2 % in 1860, 66 % in 1897. 3. Esperanto in Krak´ ow Since our academy is at home in Krak´ ow, let me mention briefly some activities here. The Krakova Societo Esperanto was founded in 1906. The language reached Krak´ ow not from Warsaw as one could imagine today, but, as a consequence of the partition of Poland, from the south, via Austrian and Hungarian cities (Kostecki 2006:5). During the century 1906–2006 there have appeared eighteen different periodicals in Krak´ ow (Kostecki 2006:14). Of the books that have been published here, let me mention Podre˛cznik je˛zyka esperanto, published in nine editions, the first in 1946, by Mieczyslaw Sygnarski, lecturer in Esperanto at the Jagellonian University, with a pref- ace written by Zenon Klemensiewicz, a renowned linguist, president of the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences and a professor at the Jagellonian University (Kostecki 2006:16–17). The yearly Esperanto world congresses started in Boulogne-sur-Mer, France, in the year 1905. Two of them have been held in Krak´ ow: in 1912, with 946 participants from 28 countries, and in 1931, with 900 participants. I think one important reason for the 1912 congress, the eighth in order, to be held in Krak´ ow was that the Austrian rule was less brutal than in other parts of the partitioned country. Only in 1937 was a world congress held in Warsaw, with 1120 participants, and then again in 1959, the cen- tenary of Zamenhof’s birth, with 3256 participants. In 1987, Warsaw was host for the centennial congress, with a record number of participants, 5946. 6 Christer Kiselman The Esperanto world congress will come back to Poland. In a speech held in Yokohama on August 11, 2007, the Mayor of Bialystok, Dr. Tadeusz Truskolaski, invited the 94th Universal Congress of Esperanto to be held in Bialystok in 2009, to mark the 150th anniversary of Zamenhof’s birth. 4. Zamenhof ’s attempt at standardizing Yiddish Let me now take up a less well-known fact from the prehistory of Esperanto. During two years, 1879–1881, Zamenhof studied medicine at the Impe- rial University in Moscow; in the fall of 1881 he returned to Warsaw and pursued his studies at the Imperial University there. During his time in Moscow he worked on Esperanto, but also on a Yiddish grammar. The ex- act period when he was working on that grammar is difficult to ascertain. J. Kohen-Cedek (Zamenhof 1982:6) gives the years as 1879–1882. Zamenhof felt that Yiddish was split into dialects and not sufficiently standardized. His grammar showed strong standardizing tendencies. There exist two main dialects of Yiddish, he writes, the “Lithuanian” and the “Polish.” It is however enough to choose one dialect, Zamenhof states, and he chooses the “Lithuanian” to be used in his grammar because its pronunciation is “purer and more correct” (Zamenhof 1982:10, 38). Birnbaum (1979:94–105) distinguishes three dialects of Yiddish in Eu- rope: West Yiddish (wy), Central Yiddish (cy), and East Yiddish (ey), the latter being subdivided into a northern subdialect (eyn) and a south- ern subdialect (eys). The East Yiddish of Bialystok belongs to the former; that of Warsaw to the latter. The subdialect eys in turn is divided into a western part (eysw), to which Warsaw belonged, and an eastern part (eyse) (Birnbaum 1979:98). We may add that the northern subdialect was in minority among speak- ers of East Yiddish: Birnbaum (1979:99) gives the figures 2,010,000 speak- ers of the northern subdialect as compared to 5,360,000 for the southern subdialect of East Yiddish. 2 The speakers of eyn were found also in Riga, Dvinsk, Vitebsk, Kaunas, Vilnius, Minsk, Grodno, and Poltava; the speak- ers of eys in a much larger area, stretching from the Baltic Sea in the north over Krak´ ow, Kyiv (Kiev), Lviv (Lemberg) and Szeged to Odessa and Bucharest in the south (Birnbaum 1979:95). There was thus a linguis- tic boundary between Bialystok and Warsaw. 2 The figures are estimates on the basis of official population statistics collected at some time during the 1920s or 1930s and on the basis of what was known of the dialect frontiers. ESPERANTO: ITS ORIGINS AND EARLY HISTORY 7 The grammar was written in Russian, since, as Kohen-Cedek (Zamenhof 1982:7) writes, Zamenhof wanted to present it primarily to the assimilated Jews of Russia, those who were not used to speaking Yiddish. In his grammar Zamenhof abandoned the Jewish alphabet traditionally used for Yiddish and proposed instead a Latin-based alphabet with five extra letters (´ c, ´
h, ´ s, ´
z, ˇ e) (Zamenhof 1982:10, 38). This would probably shock Yiddish readers. The proposed alphabet for Yiddish were very much like the one he was using at the time for an early variant of Esperanto, and not far from his alphabet of 1887, where the four letters ´ c, ´
h, ´ s, ´
z were replaced by ˆ c, ˆ h, ˆ
s, ˆ. Let me mention one more example of standardization. In German the personal pronouns have a dative and an accusative form: Ich gebe dir das Buch ‘I give you the book’ (dative, or indirect object) as opposed to Ich sehe dich ‘I see you’ (accusative, or direct object). In Swedish, a Germanic language just like Yiddish (one could say a cousin of Yiddish), this dis- tinction has disappeared, and one says Jag ger dig boken ‘I give you the book’ and Jag ser dig ‘I see you’ with the same form dig [dej] for both the indirect and direct object. In most dialects of Yiddish this distinction was conserved, as in High German, while in Northeastern Yiddish it was lost, as in Swedish. The young Ludoviko obviously did not like such discrepancies. In his grammar he chose to keep the distinction between the indirect and direct forms: du, dir, di´ h (Zamenhof 1982: §24), thus contrary to Northeastern Yiddish usage.
This grammar, written in Russian, was not published at the time, since Zamenhof became convinced, as he was to write in 1901, that his efforts concerning Yiddish had no goal and no future; the jargon was only a purely local and provisional dialect (Zamenhof 2006:46). Only parts of his gram- mar were published, and then in Yiddish translation much later: in Vilnius in 1909 (Maimon 1978:73). Just as he wanted to unite the Jews of the Russian Empire in one standardized language, he a little later wanted to unite humanity. 8 Christer Kiselman 5. Proto-Esperanto Already in 1878, Zamenhof wrote a poem in a variant of Esperanto called Lingwe uniwersala. Together with his guests, who were of different ethnic origins, he sang it at his birthday party on December 5, 1878 (old style; Boulton 1980:15, Zamenhof 2006:25): Malamikete de las nacjes, Kad´
o, kad´ o, jam temp’ est´ a. La tot’ homoze in familje Konunigare so deb´ a. (Quoted from Waringhien 1989:23.) In modern Esperanto this would be: Malamikeco de la nacioj, Falu, falu, jam temp’ estas. La tuta homaro en familion Kununuigi sin devas. In English: Enmity of the nations, Fall, fall, it is already time. All humankind in one family Must unite itself. This was already in 1878. Nothing more than this poem is extant. Later, in 1881–1882, he worked on a new version of his language; from that time we have much more specimens and can follow his thoughts on how an international language ought to be constructed. 6. What kind of language is Esperanto? After these historical remarks, let us turn to Esperanto as it is today. It is a fully developed language, whose speakers are dispersed over the globe. It is appropriate to call them a diaspora. Therefore, Esperanto speakers have been compared, sociologically, to Romani-speakers and Yiddish-speakers. When it was published in 1887, the language consisted of about 900 roots and affixes, from which 10,000 or 12,000 words could be formed. To- day, dictionaries often contain 15,000 to 20,000 roots, from which hundreds of thousands of words can be formed. The language continues to evolve ESPERANTO: ITS ORIGINS AND EARLY HISTORY 9 like any other language. It has been used for virtually every conceivable purpose except for commanding armies. In addition to the second-language speakers, there are some one thousand native speakers of Esperanto. With today’s rapid means of communication, distances mean less and less. However, many people cannot afford international travel, internet connections, or international telephone calls. Even paper letters to other countries can be too expensive. Many Chinese have learned Esperanto, but cannot easily use it for international communication because of these limitations. What are the typical traits of Esperanto as a language? Maybe the most typical is that the words consist of invariable elements, and that word classes, also known as lexical categories, are clearly marked by endings. Nouns end in -o, adjectives in -a, derived adverbs in -e, verbs in infinitive in -i, in the present tense in -as, in the past tense in -is, in the future tense in -os, the same for all verbs. So we have: Adjective blua ‘blue’: blua ˆ cielo ‘blue sky’, La ˆ cielo estas hele blua ‘The sky is bright blue’; Adverb blue ‘bluely’: blue verda ‘bluish green’; Noun bluo ‘blue color’: La bluo de tiu ˆ ci ˆ cemizo ne eltenas lavadon ‘The blue [color] of this shirt does not wash well’; Verb blui ‘to be blue’: hele blui ‘to be bright blue’, La ˆ cielo bluas ‘The sky is blue’. This means that to every adjective, there is a corresponding adverb: tele- fono ‘telephone’; telefoni hejmen ‘to phone home’; telefona katalogo ‘tele- phone book’; telefone sciigi ‘to inform by telephone’. Is there an adverb in English formed from telephone? Yes, telephonically is listed in Webster. But you do not usually say “to inform telephonically,” do you? There is an adjective t´ el´ ephonique in French, but is there an adverb t´ el´ ephoniquement ? So in these languages, it is not easy to know whether a word exists or not. In Esperanto, if you have a noun, you have also an adjective and an adverb. And you know exactly how to form it. This also means that from one single word, like sana ‘healthy’, one can create many new words by changing the ending. We have sano ‘health’; sane ‘healthily’, an adverb; sani ‘to be healthy’; Sanu! ‘May you have good health!’. And one can go on, adding other morphemes: sanigi ‘to heal’, saniga ‘healing’, saniˆ gi ‘to become well’, malsana ‘sick’, malsano ‘sickness’, malsani ‘to be ill’, malsanulejo ‘hospital’, etc.
10 Christer Kiselman The idea that the words shall consist of invariable elements (as in Chi- nese) was, as Zamenhof said in the preface to his first book, entirely foreign to the European peoples. They would have difficulty getting used to that, he wrote, so he adapted this dissolution, or disintegration, of the language to European usage with the result that those who study the language with- out having read his preface will not notice that the language differs in any way from their mother tongue (D r speranto 1887a:12). As to the stock of words, Esperanto takes them mainly from the Ro- mance languages. That could mean Latin, like domo ‘house’ (cf. Latin domus) and prujno ‘hoarfrost, rime’ (cf. Latin pruina), but most often it is the French version of a word that is closest, like ˆ cemizo ‘shirt’ (cf. French chemise, Italian camicia) and ˆ cevalo ‘horse’ (cf. French cheval, Italian cav- allo).
Some words come from Germanic languages, like hundo ‘dog’ (cf. Ger- man Hund and English hound ); birdo ‘bird’; pelto ‘pelt, fur’ (cf. German Pelz and English pelt, peltry). So, considering the stock of words, there is a majority of them com- ing from Romance languages, a minority from Germanic languages, and a few from Slavic languages like Russian and Polish. And then a smat- tering of Greek: kaj ‘and’ (cf. Greek κα´ ι, κα`
ι; kai ) and brako ‘arm’ (cf. Greek β αχ´ ιων, brakh´ı¯ on; taken over also by Latin bracchium, French bras, Spanish brazo and Portuguese bra¸ co).
7. Influences from Polish on Esperanto There is one obvious trait in Esperanto which comes from Polish and which permeates the whole language: the fixed stress on the penultimate (next to last) syllable. This is remarkable, since the first, unpublished version of the language had mobile stress as in Russian: Jam temp’ est´ a! ‘It is already time; let’s get going!’ became Jam estas tempo!. Personally I think that a mobile accent makes for better poetry. Indeed, Zamenhof tried out his different versions of the language by translating po- ems and writing poems himself. This was a most important step in the development of the language—what is a language without poetry? How- ever, in the final analysis, ease of learning was an overriding concern and made him choose fixed stress. Thus est´ a ‘is’ of 1878 was replaced by estas in 1887, and kad´ o! ‘fall!’ (imperative) by falu!. A word which is obviously influenced by Polish is the interrogative par- ticle ˆ cu, from Polish czy: ˆ Cu vi parolas la polan? ‘Do you speak Polish?’,
ESPERANTO: ITS ORIGINS AND EARLY HISTORY 11 in Polish Czy m´ owi pani/pan po polsku? ; ˆ Cu ne?
‘Isn’t it?’; ˆ Cu?
‘Re- ally?’. David L. Gold informs me (personal communication 2008-01-03) that Northeastern Yiddish has tsu and Southern Yiddish tsi with the same meaning. This certainly reinforced Zamenhof’s choice. 8. Influences from Russian on Esperanto There are some words which are obviously of Russian origin in Esperanto. One is the adverb nepre ‘unconditionally, necessarily, definitely’, from the Russian nepremenno with the same meaning. But let us look at a more basic phenomenon. The plural ending in Esperanto is -j : bela domo ‘a beautiful house’, be- laj domoj ‘beautiful houses’; malgranda muso ‘a small mouse’, malgrandaj musoj ‘small mice’, blanka ansero ‘a white goose’, blankaj anseroj ‘white geese’. This makes for a lot of aj, oj in Esperanto. It is believed that the choice of ending was made for the Greek plural ending in words like logos ‘word, thought’, logoi ‘words, thoughts’; nautes ‘sailor’, nautai ‘sailors’. This is perhaps the most probable explanation, although N. Z. Maimon pointed out that it could have been the Aramaic ˆ sivto, ˆ sivtajo ‘tribe, tribes’ and gavro, gavrajo ‘man, men’ and many other nouns which inspired Lu- doviko early in his life to the plural ending -j (Kohen-Cedek 1969:204). One could also mention plural endings of Lithuanian nouns and adjec- tives as a possible reinforcement of Zamenhof’s choice of plural ending, for example: v´ yras, v´
yrai ‘man, men’ or ‘husband, husbands’, in Esperanto viro, viroj or edzo, edzoj ; br´ olis, br´ oliai ‘brother, brothers’, in Esperanto frato, fratoj. Here v´ yras and br´ olis are two nouns of the first declension. I would like to offer still another explanation for the choice; I have not seen anyone forward this one. I certainly do not mean that it is the main explanation, but it could have been a contributing factor. In Russian there are ten letters for vowels, usually called soft and hard, five of each kind: i, e, , , and y, , a, o, u (i, je, ja, jo, ju and y, `e, a, o, u). Esperanto has five vowel phonemes: i, e, a, o, u. For an ear accustomed to Russian, this sounds a bit dry—one could feel a need to complement them with softer sounds. But a language with ten vowels is hard to learn. A compromise could be to soften words by throwing in a few j here and there. In fact, in Esperanto the vowels e, a, o, u often appear followed by a j, so that they are supplemented by ej, aj, oj, uj, where -aj appears in adjectives in plural, -oj in nouns in plural, and -ej- and -uj- are common suffixes. So the series ej, aj, oj, uj ; i, e, a, o, u in Esperanto actually 12 Christer Kiselman mimics the Russian e, , , ; y, , a, o, u. Here the softening, or palatizing, element comes after the vowel, not before as in Russian, but it certainly makes the words sound softer. In addition to the many endings -aj, -oj, there are several very common words containing j in Esperanto: kaj ‘and’, ajn ‘any’, ja (emphatic particle), je (indefinite preposition), ju ... des ... ‘the ... the ...’. 9. Influences from Yiddish on Esperanto Latin, French and, to a lesser extent, German, Russian and Polish are the obvious sources for most Esperanto words. It is much less obvious that there is another source, not often mentioned, and not mentioned by Zamenhof himself.
The Esperanto words hejti ‘to heat’, hejmo ‘home’, ˆ sajni ‘to appear, to seem’, fajfi ‘to whistle’ and fajli ‘to file’ with the diphthongs ej and aj are without doubt of Germanic origin. In German, for instance, they are heizen, Heim, scheinen, pfeifen and feilen, all with ei. Why are some of these ei rendered by ej and others by aj ? The made-up phrase, Kial ni hejtas la hejmon sed ˆ sajnas fajfi pri la fajlado? ‘Why do we heat the home but seem to neglect filing?’ is the title of an article I published some years ago (Kiselman 1992). Why do we not ∗ hajti la hajmon sed ˆ sejnas fejfi pri la fejlado? If one knows only the German language, one cannot guess: the choice between ej and aj seems to be totally random. Can the origin be the Yiddish language? David L. Gold writes about hejmo and hejti in a study (1980:316): It is hard to believe that Zamenhof would borrow these words from Yiddish and we must therefore link them in some way with German. There is a North German pronunciation of heizen with ej, but Zamen- hof borrowed only from standard varieties of languages and would not have taken nonstandard German pronunciation into consideration. He goes on: The answer is that Zamenhof borrowed the Schriftbild, rather than the Lautbild, of these German words. But in the case of fajfi, fajli and ˆ sajni he evidently chose the “Lautbild.” Why? Gold cites the hypothesis of Richard E. Wood that the diphthong ej is partly of Yiddish origin.
ESPERANTO: ITS ORIGINS AND EARLY HISTORY 13 Istv´ an Szerdahelyi, in his article (1987) says quite generally: “La modelo de la D-transkribo estis la J kiel peranto inter D kaj E” (The model for transliteration from German was Yiddish as a mediator between German and Esperanto), and he lists the German words Heim, feilen and pfeifen as the origin of hejmo, fajli and fajfi, but he does not compare them to Yiddish (Szerdahelyi 1987: 123; see also the review by Gold 1987). Old High German words with ej and ¯ ı The five words with ej/aj in the phrase quoted above are from the Fun- damento (Zamenhof 1991), the book from 1905 setting the standard for Esperanto; hejti, fajfi and ˆ sajni even appear in the first book of 1887. Let us look for the Old High German origins of these words and some oth- ers. Then a very clear pattern appears. This pattern becomes even more striking if we list also the corresponding words in some other Germanic languages, including Northeastern Yiddish. Zamenhof lived in Bialystok until he was 14, and, as already remarked, the Yiddish of Bialystok is a variety of Northeastern Yiddish. First the words with ej : Old High German heim
heiz stein
eigan ein
German Heim
heiz Stein
eigen ein
Yiddish (eyn) hejm
hejs shtejn
ejgn ejn
Dutch heem
heet steen
eigen een
Icelandic heimili
heitur steinn
eigin einn
Swedish hem
het sten
egen en Old English h¯ am h¯ at st¯
an ¯ agen ¯ an English home hot
stone own
one Esperanto hejmo hejti
ˆ stono
propra unu
In the column with hejti I have written the words in the respective languages with the meaning ‘hot’, because I did not find translations of hejti ‘to heat’ in all languages; also the adjective seems to present the clearest analogies. In Yiddish the verb to heat is hejtsn. We see that Old High German ei corresponds to Yiddish ej, to Dutch ee (except in the case of eigen), to Icelandic ei, to Swedish e, to Old English ¯ a and English o, and finally in Esperanto to ej in the first two cases. In the three last cases, another choice was made; if Zamenhof had followed the 14 Christer Kiselman model of the first ones for the words propra and ˆ stono, they would certainly have been ∗ ejgena and ∗ stejno, respectively, or possibly ∗ ˆ
And now to the words in the same languages corresponding to some Esperanto words with aj, plus the river name Rejno: Old High German pf¯ıfa
v¯ılen sk¯ınan
R¯ın, Hr¯ın German
pfeifen feilen
scheinen Rhein
Yiddish (eyn) fajfn
fajln shajnen
rajn, rejn Dutch
pijpen vijlen
schijnen Rijn
Icelandic p´ıpa
[thj¨ ol ]
sk´ına R´ın
Swedish pipa
fila skina
Rhen Old English p¯ıpa [f¯
eol ] sc¯ınan
r¯ın English
pipe file
shine Rhine
Esperanto fajfi
fajli ˆ sajni Rejno Here the Old High German pf¯ıfa, the Icelandic p´ıpa and the Old English p¯ıpa all mean ‘pipe’. The Yiddish shajnen means ‘to shine’, just as the Swedish word, not ‘to seem, to appear’ as the German and Esperanto words in the same column. The classical form of the modern Icelandic thj¨ ol ‘file’ was th´ el, in Old Swedish fel, fæl. The modern Swedish word fil ‘file’ is borrowed from Low German v¯ıle. Thus a word can arrive to a language along several roads. The Old High German ¯ı corresponds in Dutch to ij, in Icelandic in general to ´ı, in Old English in general to ¯ı, in English to i, and, in the first three cases, in Yiddish to aj, in Swedish to i, and in Esperanto to aj. Concerning the name Rejno things differ a little, for according to the models of Old High German, Dutch, Icelandic, Old English, and English, it should have been ∗ Rajno. (Note, however, the English adjective Rhenish, from the Latin name Rhenus.) That Zamenhof chose Rejno rather than ∗ Rajno can be under the influence of the Russian way of transliterating German proper names and loanwords from German: Russian Re n (now Re n), similarly nxte n for Einstein, and re nve n, me sterzinger from the German Rheinwein, Meistersinger. In Yiddish dictionaries the river name is commonly rendered as rajn. David L. Gold, in a private letter to me, writes: “I have now determined that the Yiddish rayn is a recent borrowing of New High German Rhein. The traditional Yiddish name for the river is reyn.” He goes on: “However, I am not certain that ESPERANTO: ITS ORIGINS AND EARLY HISTORY 15 Zamenhof knew the traditional Yiddish word. Speakers of Eastern Yiddish did not have occasion to talk about that river.” As already pointed out, the East Yiddish words in the two tables are romanized according to their Bialystok pronunciation. In the Yiddish of Warsaw, pronunciation is different although the distinction is made also there: to ej/aj in Bialystok corresponds the pair aj/¯ a in Warsaw. This fact is mentioned by Zamenhof in his Yiddish grammar (1982:10, 38), and, as we could see above, he considered the “Lithuanian” pronunciation, i.e., the subdialect eyn (Birnbaum 1979:97), to be purer and more correct. By the way, in his proposed alphabet for Yiddish he would write some of the words mentioned above as hejcˇ en, fajfˇ en, fajlˇ en, ´
sajnˇ en, using the new letter ˇ e, denoting a vowel (a kind of schwa) not to be confused with e. By presenting this comparison I by no means want to claim that Zamen- hof knew, or was influenced by, Dutch, Icelandic, or Swedish. But I want to show that the distinction of ei and ¯ı in Old High German, which was lost in German, is still preserved in several modern Germanic languages, and that this distinction somehow survived in Esperanto. Along which lines and for which reasons? We have seen that the distinction in Old High German between ei and ¯ı is conserved, both in writing and pronunciation, in several Germanic languages: in East Yiddish (ej as opposed to aj in the northern group and aj as opposed to ¯ a in the southern group 3 ), in Dutch (ee as opposed to ij ), in Icelandic (ei as opposed to ´ı ), in Swedish (e as opposed to i ), in Old English (¯ a as opposed to ¯ı) and English (o as opposed to i ). Also in Esperanto this distinction is made: ej as opposed to aj in the examples considered. Of the languages mentioned here, German is the only one where they are merged into a single ei. Mieses (1924:32) expresses this fact more drastically, writing that the Modern High German “Vokalismus ein Nivellierungsprodukt ist, das ¨ uber verschiedene historische Vokalformen der mhd. Sprache uniformierend fuhr, w¨ ahrend der Jude an einem ¨ alteren Lautstadium festh¨ alt.” Probably the distinction was and is made in several German dialects. I do not dare to exclude that Zamenhof was influenced by some German dialect. I do not know how he pronounced German, which he spoke fluently, nor how the Germans in Bialystok or Warsaw pronounced the language. 3 I am not sure that the word for home was pronounced [hajm] in all of eys; perhaps it was only in eysw; see the map in Birnbaum (1979:95). However, in Warsaw this was so; Warsaw belongs to eysw. David L. Gold, in a personal letter (2008-01-03) to the author, gives the pronunciation as [hejm] in Northeastern and Southeastern Yiddish, as [hajm] in Central Yiddish, and as [ha:m] in Western Yiddish. 16 Christer Kiselman But David L. Gold (1980: 316) and Ebbe Vilborg (in a personal letter to the author) assure us that we do not have to consider German dialects, only the standard High German language of Zamenhof’s time. Ebbe Vilborg, in a personal letter to the author, emphasizes that the choice of aj in fajfi, fajli and ˆ sajni broadens the base of these words, i.e., that by this choice Zamenhof succeeded in giving to the words some element of more languages (just as ˆ stono is a compromise between Stein and stone). This is possible just because the distinction survived in English: the three words with aj are similar in pronunciation to English words. We may
remark that one might just as well turn the argument around: because of this, Zamenhof obtained a suitable pretext for his spontaneous preference for the Yiddish forms. My conclusions are the following. 1. To understand the choice between ej and aj in the words mentioned, it is totally insufficient to consider German as a source. It is not worthwhile to try to connect them in any way with German. 4 2. That Yiddish in its Bialystok pronunciation is the source of the con- sidered Esperanto words is the simplest and most probable explana- tion.
3. However, since similar distinctions are made quite systematically in several Germanic languages, it is not possible with absolute certainty to prove what was really the reason behind the choices made by Zamenhof. 5 The choice of a word in a planned language always contains some element of randomness. However, the remarkable observation made here is not randomness but the systematic agreement with the Bialystok pronunciation of Yiddish. 10. Hillelism and Homaranismo His whole life Zamenhof was driven by the idea of peace to mankind. He formulated religious principles that, he thought, could be accepted by every human being and saw his language as a means towards realizing a project 4 Gold (1980: 316) wanted to do this, but later (in a letter to me) agreed with my conclusions. 5 See the explanation offered by Vilborg above. ESPERANTO: ITS ORIGINS AND EARLY HISTORY 17 of love, peace and understanding. He called these principles Hilelismo ‘Hil- lelism’, named for the Jewish religious leader Hillel the Elder, and later Homaranismo ‘Humanism’, from homaro ‘humanity’, homarano ‘a mem- ber of humanity’. To comprehend his actions it is important to be acquainted also with this side of his personality. With regrets I have to refrain from going into detail concerning his religious ideas. However, the religious side of his endeavors was not appreciated, notably during the first and second international congresses, in Boulogne-sur-Mer 1905 and in Geneva 1906. The leading French Esperantists looked upon Esperanto as a practical invention, more like a telegraph by means of which one could send any message. This was indeed far from Zamenhof’s thinking. 11.
Who was Zamenhof, really? Zamenhof considered himself as a son of Poland (Maimon 1978:203). His native country or province he called Lithuania, notably in his speech in the City of London Guildhall in 1907 (Zamenhof 1929:383, 1997:48). He was a member of the Jewish people. He was a citizen of Russia. So who was he, really? He had several identities, and it is not easy to understand these identities and how they interacted over time in the different cultural settings he lived in. However, he united all these identities in an overriding one: Mi estas homo ‘I am a human being’. He was born into a multicultural environment and he was a cosmopolitan from a very early age. In his speech in Bologne-sur-Mer in 1905 he said: But precisely as I am at this moment not a member of any nation, but a simple human being, I also feel that at this moment I do not belong to any religion, but I am only a human being. (Zamenhof 1997:15; translated by the author) 12. In conclusion Esperanto is an interesting cultural phenomenon and deserves to be studied from the viewpoints of several disciplines, social sciences as well as linguis- tics. Its speakers form a many-faceted group, dispersed over large parts of the planet. It is interesting to belong to this community, since few other groups of people have so culturally diverse interests, so many international
18 Christer Kiselman contacts, and such great tolerance for others. In today’s parlance, it is a social network. It can in some respects be compared with the speakers of Yiddish or Romani. I would think that it is at least as interesting to be an Esperantist as to belong to the Yiddish-speakers or the Romani-speakers. But there is a difference. If you would like to become a Yiddish-speaking Jew or a Romani-speaking Gypsy not being one from birth, then you can- not. But if you want to become an Esperanto-speaking Esperantist, then you can.
Acknowledgment I am indebted to David L. Gold for many important comments (in 1992 as well as in 2008) on Yiddish, especially on its pronunciation; to Ebbe Vilborg for careful remarks on the etymology of Esperanto words; and to Ragnar Sigurdsson for help with Icelandic words. References Solomon A. Birnbaum (1979). Yiddish: A Survey and a Grammar. Toronto and Buffalo: University of Toronto Press. ISBN 0-8020-5382-3. xiii + 399 pp. Marjorie Boulton (1980). Zamenhof. Creator of Esperanto. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. xii + 223 pp. D r
` Esperanto; pseudonym of Dr. L. Zamenhof] (1887a). Me dunarodny zyk . Predislov e i polny uqebnik . Warsaw: Kelter. 42 pp. Dr. Esperanto [Pseudonym of Dr. L. Zamenhof] (1887b). Je˛zyk mie˛dzynarodowy. Przedmowa i podre˛cznik kompletny. Warsaw: Kelter. Dr. Esperanto [Pseudonym of Dr. L. Zamenhof] (1887c). Langue internationale. Pr´ eface et Manuel complet. Warsaw: Kelter. 48 pp. Dr. Esperanto [Pseudonym of Dr. L. Zamenhof] (1887d). Internationale Sprache. Vorrede und vollst¨ andiges Lehrbuch. Warsaw: Kelter. David L. Gold (1980). Towards a study of possible Yiddish and Hebrew influ- ence on Esperanto. In: Miscellanea Interlinguistica (Ed. I. Szerdahelyi), pp. 300–367. Budapest: Tank¨ onyvkiad´ o. [Now being considerably revised and expanded; David L. Gold, personal communication 2008-01-03.] David L. Gold (1987). Review of Szerdahelyi (1987). Jewish Language Review, 7, 412–413. Adolf Holzhaus (1969). Doktoro kaj lingvo Esperanto. Helsinki: Fondumo Es- peranto. 524 pp. Christer Kiselman (1992). Kial ni hejtas la hejmon sed ˆ sajnas fajfi pri la fajlado? Literatura Foiro 138, 213–216. J. Kohen-Cedek (1969). Aramea lingvo. In: Holzhaus (1969), pp. 188–204.
ESPERANTO: ITS ORIGINS AND EARLY HISTORY 19 Marian Kostecki (2006). Krakovaj kunkreintoj de Esperanto-movado kaj kulturo (1906–2006). Krak´ ow: Krakova Societo Esperanto. 36 pp. ludovikito [Pseudonym of Kanzi Itˆ o] (1982). senlegenda biografio de l.l.zamenhof [Biography Without Legends of L. L. Zamenhof ]. Published by ludovikito. Printed in Kyoto. 303 pp. N. Z. Maimon (1978). La kaˆ sita vivo de Zamenhof. Originalaj studoj [The Hidden Life of Zamenhof. Studies in Original ]. Tokyo: Japana Esperanto-Instituto. 214 pp.
Matthias Mieses (1924). Die jiddische Sprache. Berlin & Wien: Verlag Benjamin Harz. XV + 322 pp. Istvan [Istv´ an] Szerdahelyi (1987). Principoj de Esperanta etimologio. In: Stu- doj pri la internacia lingvo; Etudes sur la langue internationale; Studies on international Language (Ed. Michel Duc Goninaz), 109–138. Gent: AIMAV. Gaston Waringhien (1989). Lingvo kaj vivo. Esperantologiaj eseoj [Language and Life.
Esperantological Essays]. Rotterdam: Universala Esperanto-Asocio. ISBN 92 9017 042 5. 452 pp. Wikipedia. The Pale of Settlement. Link checked on 2008-03-12. L. L. Zamenhof (1929). Originala verkaro. Anta˘ uparoloj, gazetartikoloj, traktaˆoj, paroladoj, leteroj, poemoj [Original works. Forewords, newpaper articles, treaties, speeches, letters, poems]. Collected and ordered by Joh. Dietterle. Leipzig: Ferdinand Hirt & Sohn. 605 pp. Reprinted 1983 by Oriental-Libro, Osaka. L. Zamenhof (1982). Opyt grammatiki novoevre skago zyka (Provo de gramatiko de novjuda lingvo) and Obrawenie k evre sko intelligencii (Alvoko al la juda intelektularo) [Attempt at a Grammar of Yiddish and Appeal to the Jewish intellectuals]. Translated from Russian into Esperanto by J. Kohen-Cedek and Adolf Holzhaus, respectively. Helsinki: Fondumo Esperanto. 159 pp. ISBN 951-9005-48-X. L. L. Zamenhof (1991). Fundamento de Esperanto. Tenth edition. Pisa: Edistudio. 355 pp. ISBN 88-7036-046-6. L. L. Zamenhof (1997). Paroladoj de D-ro Zamenhof. Toyonaka: Japana Esper- anta Librokooperativo. L.-L. Zamenhof (2006). Mi estas homo [I am a human being ]. Kaliningrad: Se- zonoj. 288 pp. About the author I am a professional mathematician, and I have known Krak´ ow mathemati- cians a long time: my first visit to Krak´ ow dates back to 1974, when Professor J´ ozef Siciak organized a conference on analytic functions here. I have since then come back to Krak´ ow and other cities in Poland many times. I have been to Warsaw, L´ od´
z, Kielce, Bla˙zejewko, in the mountains 20 Christer Kiselman close to Kozubnik, and in Bielsko-Biala for mathematical reasons; to War- saw, Gda´ nsk, Zakopane, Cze˛stochowa, and Pozna´ n for other reasons. I feel deeply honored by being elected as a foreign member of this academy. I am not a professional linguist, but I have been interested in languages since I was a child. The teacher in Norra real in Stockholm that made the strongest impression on me was Karl Axn¨ as (1899–1984), who held a Ph.D. in Slavic languages and was my teacher of German. I also listened to his radio course in Russian. His thesis had the title Slavisch-baltisches in altnordischen Beinamen. Uppsala: Appelbergs, 1937. XV + 114 pp. This early interest in languages resulted in a membership in the Esperanto Academy in 1989. On this occasion, Professor Siciak has suggested that I speak about Esperanto rather than mathematics, probably because mathematics would be of less general interest. (I have no difficulty in following his suggestion.) Yüklə 211,98 Kb. Dostları ilə paylaş:
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