Bridge of Words

The "international language," as Zamenhof initially called it, was designed not to replace national languages but to be a second language for the world. While earlier lingua francas, such as Greek, Latin, and French, had issued from empires, Zamenhof invented a language that would commit its users to transcend nationalism. Free of imperial or national identity, Esperanto would serve neither dogma nor nationalism nor arms nor money but the conscience and reason of its users, who had determined to become a better people of the future. Perhaps no dream of the century was more quixotic, except for Zamenhof's other dream: that human beings would, decade after decade, choose this inheritance, treasure it, and expand its expressive reach. And yet, for well more than a century and on six continents, people have done, and still do.

Esperantists, even in their most practical moments, have always dreamed of change, but they have not always shared the same dream. Zamenhof's "international language" has been used by anarchists, socialists, pacifists, theosophists, Baha^s, feminists, Stalinists, and even McCarthyites; as sociologist Roberto Garv^a puts it, "Esperantists ended up speaking the same language, but not dancing to the same music."¹ Ironically, while Esperantists were often vague about what united them, totalitarians, fascists, and Nazis were not; sooner or later, Esperanto would always be reviled as a cosmopolitan, subversive movement inimical to nationalism and tainted by its Jewish origins. As we shall see, a few Esperantists made strange bedfellows with imperial powers, but sooner or later, they were forsaken. And being forsaken by an empire, for Esperantists, usually meant being banned, imprisoned, or shot. When Esperantists confronted the dreams of Hitler and of two latter- day Josephs—Stalin and McCarthy—the results were at best perilous, at worst murderous.

But the story of Esperanto is also a story of fantastic resilience, adaptation, and renovation. The early concept of the fina venko—the final triumph of Esperanto as a world language—has died a thousand deaths, most notably in 1922, when the League of Nations remanded a proposal to teach Esperanto in schools to a marginal committee on intellectual cooperation. Since then the ranks of the fnavenkistoj have steadily dwindled. During the Cold War era, in place of the fina venko, Esperantists raised the banners of human rights, pacifism, and nuclear disarmament. In 1980, a later generation of Esperantists would officially renounce the fina venko, declaring themselves to be an autonomous, diasporic culture. With the Raumists, as they were called (after the Finnish town where they convened), Esperanto's universalist ideology was recast in a late- twentieth-century sensibility, askew, decentered, and skeptical of grand narratives altogether. Instead, the Raumists addressed themselves to the well-being, culture, and development of the Esperanto community, devoting time and attention to Esperanto in exchange for all manner of satisfactions: social, psychologial, ethical, political, aesthetic, intellectual, sexual—everything, that is, except political power and financial gain.

When I mention my work on Esperanto, I'm often asked, "How many people speak it?" I too, have asked this question, to which some Esperantists have offered answers. Amanda, ex-president of the Australian Esperanto Association, replies, "How many people collect stamps? How long is a piece of string?" Others point me to the website of the Universal Esperanto Association, which records "hundreds of thousands, possibly millions," in seventy countries. The only estimate with academic prestige is that of the late psycholinguist Sidney Culbert, who in 1989 put the number at between one and two million. Still, as Culbert conceded, "the tendency to overestimate the number of speakers of one's own language is not uncommon";² this particular psycholinguist spoke only Esperanto at home and drove a Honda bearing plates with the greeting "SALUTON"—Esperanto for "hello."³

The internet has augmented the number of learners, if not speakers. The online lernu! course, between 2004 and 2016, chalked up nearly twenty million visits to the site, and the Esperanto Duolingo website, launched in 2015, boasted 333,000 members after only ten months. How many Esperanto learners actually learn it well enough to participate in the community, online or off, is impossible to say; no doubt many take it up for the sheer fun of it, with no thought to the community at all.

My favorite answer to the question "How many?" was offered by Adel, a wry Hungarian teenager: "Sufiĉe!" she joked, meaning enough to comprise a vibrant worldwide community—and enough asking how many.