Esperanto and Its Rivals
Esperanto and Its Rivals

Author: Roberto Garvia

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Published: 2015-04-22

Total Pages: 236

ISBN-13: 0812291271

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The problems of international communication and linguistic rights are recurring debates in the present-day age of globalization. But the debate truly began over a hundred years ago, when the increasingly interconnected world of the nineteenth century fostered a desire for the development of a global lingua franca. Many individuals and social movements competed to create an artificial language unencumbered by the political rivalries that accompanied English, German, and French. Organizations including the American Philosophical Society, the International Association of Academies, the International Peace Bureau, the Comintern, and the League of Nations intervened in the debate about the possibility of an artificial language, but of the numerous tongues created before World War II, only Esperanto survives today. Esperanto and Its Rivals sheds light on the factors that led almost all artificial languages to fail and helped English to prevail as the global tongue of the twenty-first century. Exploring the social and political contexts of the three most prominent artificial languages—Volapük, Esperanto, and Ido—Roberto Garvía examines the roles played by social movement leaders and inventors, the strategies different organizations used to lobby for each language, and other early decisions that shaped how those languages spread and evolved. Through the rise and fall of these artificial languages, Esperanto and Its Rivals reveals the intellectual dilemmas and political anxieties that troubled the globalizing world at the turn of the twentieth century.

Esperanto and Its Rivals
Esperanto and Its Rivals

Author: Roberto Garvía Soto

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Published: 2015-06-04

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 0812247108

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Roberto Garvía explores the history of artificial spoken or written languages and the people who fought for them. Taking the three most prominent—Volapük, Esperanto, and Ido—Garvía investigates what drove so many to invest incredible energy and time to learn and promote them.

Bridge of Words
Bridge of Words

Author: Esther Schor

Publisher: Macmillan

Published: 2016-10-04

Total Pages: 384

ISBN-13: 0805090797

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"A history of Esperanto, the utopian "universal language" invented in 1887"--

Multilingual Environments in the Great War
Multilingual Environments in the Great War

Author: Julian Walker

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2021-03-25

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 1350141364

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This book explores the differing ways in which language has been used to try to make sense of the First World War. Offering further developments in an innovative approach to the study of the conflict, it develops a transnational viewpoint of the experience of war to reveal less expected areas of language use during the conflict. Taking the study of the First World War far beyond the Western Front, chapters examine experiences in many regions, including Africa, Armenia, post-war Australia, Russia and Estonia, and a variety of contexts, from prisoner-of-war and internment camps, to food queues and post-war barracks. Drawing upon a wide variety of languages, such as Esperanto, Flemish, Italian, Kiswahili, Portuguese, Romanian and Turkish, Multilingual Environments in the Great War brings together language experiences of conflict from both combatants and the home front, connecting language and literature with linguistic analysis of the immediacy of communication.

Esperanto and Languages of Internationalism in Revolutionary Russia
Esperanto and Languages of Internationalism in Revolutionary Russia

Author: Brigid O'Keeffe

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2021-05-20

Total Pages: 396

ISBN-13: 1350160679

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Winner of the 2022 Ab Imperio Award Hoping to unite all of humankind and revolutionize the world, Ludwik Zamenhof launched a new international language called Esperanto from late imperial Russia in 1887. Ordinary men and women in Russia and all over the world soon transformed Esperanto into a global movement. Esperanto and Languages of Internationalism in Revolutionary Russia traces the history and legacy of this effort: from Esperanto's roots in the social turmoil of the pre-revolutionary Pale of Settlement; to its links to socialist internationalism and Comintern bids for world revolution; and, finally, to the demise of the Soviet Esperanto movement in the increasingly xenophobic Stalinist 1930s. In doing so, this book reveals how Esperanto – and global language politics more broadly – shaped revolutionary and early Soviet Russia. Based on extensive archival materials, Brigid O'Keeffe's book provides the first in-depth exploration of Esperanto at grassroots level and sheds new light on a hitherto overlooked area of Russian history. As such, Esperanto and Languages of Internationalism in Revolutionary Russia will be of immense value to both historians of modern Russia and scholars of internationalism, transnational networks, and sociolinguistics.

Esperanto Revolutionaries and Geeks
Esperanto Revolutionaries and Geeks

Author: Guilherme Fians

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2022-01-04

Total Pages: 279

ISBN-13: 3030842304

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This book explores how Esperanto – often regarded as a future-oriented utopian project that ended up confined to the past – persists in the present. Constructed in the late nineteenth century to promote global linguistic understanding, this language was historically linked to anarchism, communism and pacifism. Yet, what political relevance does Esperanto retain in the present? What impacts have emerging communication technologies had on the dynamics of this speech community? Unpacking how Esperanto speakers are everywhere, but concentrated nowhere, the author argues that digital media have provided tools for people to (re)politicise acts of communication, produce horizontal learning spaces and, ultimately, build an international community. As Esperanto speakers question the post-political consensus about communication rights, this language becomes an ally of activism for open-source software and global social justice. This book will be of relevance to students and scholars researching political activism, language use and community-building, as well as anyone with an interest in digital media more broadly.

International Cooperation in the Early Twentieth Century
International Cooperation in the Early Twentieth Century

Author: Daniel Gorman

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2017-09-21

Total Pages: 355

ISBN-13: 147256796X

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The early 20th-century world experienced a growth in international cooperation. Yet the dominant historical view of the period has long been one of national, military, and social divisions rather than connections. International Cooperation in the Early Twentieth Century revises this historical consensus by providing a more focused and detailed analysis of the many ways in which people interacted with each other across borders in the early decades of the 20th century. It devotes particular attention to private and non-governmental actors. Daniel Gorman focuses on international cooperation, international social movements, various forms of cultural internationalism, imperial and anti-imperial internationalism, and the growth of cosmopolitan ideas. The book incorporates a non-Western focus alongside the transatlantic core of early 20th-century internationalism. It interweaves analyses of international anti-colonial networks, ideas emanating from non-Western sites of influence such as Japan, China and Turkey, the emergence of networks of international indigenous peoples in resistance to a state-centric international system, and diaspora and transnational ethno-cultural-religious identity networks.