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Mother tongue
May. 20th, 2013 11:08 amI'm not entirely sure why the door caught my eye. Possibly because it was slightly incongruous, stuck between a branch of Boots and a chain Coffee Shop on a North London street. It had a window in it with a card stuck onto it, and in the "Let's look at stuff because London is an interesting place" frame of mind I try to cultivate I went and looked what it said.
"Esperanto lessons given".
Well, I certainly wasn't expecting that.
The thing about London is that you're forever hearing other tongues in their variety of snap crackle pop and dong bleep urgleberry ways spoken around you and it just becomes part of the background. But Esperanto? The thought there might be a need or even a demand for Esperanto lessons took me by surprise. However, ten seconds on the internet told me that there are an estimated 1,000 "native speakers" of Esperanto worldwide.
If you haven't heard of Esperanto, it's an entirely invented language created in the 1880s with that late 19th-century utopian sort of hope that it could be used to bring all peoples and nations together in a common tongue. Obviously that didn't work out but enough people were taken with the idea that it caught on in a small way. Apparently ten million people have at some point or another had a go at learning the language, and I'm one of them. Back when I discovered Harry Harrison's Stainless Steel Rat (Harrison was an Esperanto enthusiast and the language was spoken by everyone in his created universe) I got an Esperanto dictionary out of the library and spent a week trying to cram it into my head before giving up. I can still remember bits of the tongue; possibly the standout is "fivirino" - a word for a woman of loose morals to which there is no male equivalent, which tells you something of the mindset of the time and place it was created.
Anyway, Esperanto certainly caught on more than other created languages such a Volapuk, which a few years ago had only two fluent speakers in the world. They used to get together and sing Volapuk songs round a piano and wonder why they never met any girls, I expect.
I peered through the window in the door; it revealed a long hallway and a flight of stairs, cluttered and untidy. I considered knocking for a moment out of sheer curiousity, but as it turned out, English, thanks to being the language of international business, travel, and especially the internet, has rendered any hypothetical need for an invented universal language obsolete. But still, I mused as I wandered off down the road. It's nice to know that one corner of Finchley will ever be Esperant.
"Esperanto lessons given".
Well, I certainly wasn't expecting that.
The thing about London is that you're forever hearing other tongues in their variety of snap crackle pop and dong bleep urgleberry ways spoken around you and it just becomes part of the background. But Esperanto? The thought there might be a need or even a demand for Esperanto lessons took me by surprise. However, ten seconds on the internet told me that there are an estimated 1,000 "native speakers" of Esperanto worldwide.
If you haven't heard of Esperanto, it's an entirely invented language created in the 1880s with that late 19th-century utopian sort of hope that it could be used to bring all peoples and nations together in a common tongue. Obviously that didn't work out but enough people were taken with the idea that it caught on in a small way. Apparently ten million people have at some point or another had a go at learning the language, and I'm one of them. Back when I discovered Harry Harrison's Stainless Steel Rat (Harrison was an Esperanto enthusiast and the language was spoken by everyone in his created universe) I got an Esperanto dictionary out of the library and spent a week trying to cram it into my head before giving up. I can still remember bits of the tongue; possibly the standout is "fivirino" - a word for a woman of loose morals to which there is no male equivalent, which tells you something of the mindset of the time and place it was created.
Anyway, Esperanto certainly caught on more than other created languages such a Volapuk, which a few years ago had only two fluent speakers in the world. They used to get together and sing Volapuk songs round a piano and wonder why they never met any girls, I expect.
I peered through the window in the door; it revealed a long hallway and a flight of stairs, cluttered and untidy. I considered knocking for a moment out of sheer curiousity, but as it turned out, English, thanks to being the language of international business, travel, and especially the internet, has rendered any hypothetical need for an invented universal language obsolete. But still, I mused as I wandered off down the road. It's nice to know that one corner of Finchley will ever be Esperant.
