| Cu vi parolas Esperanton? If David Yaki has his way, everyone in the world will one day know what this question means and answer it in the affirmative.
Yaki is the director of the Calgary Esperanto Centre (909-7 Ave. S.W.). This humble, two-room centre is the largest resource in Calgary dedicated to what some hope will become the international language.
Yaki says that the centre is attempting to help further the progress of Esperanto in three ways. "We are trying to increase awareness of Esperanto, offer opportunities for people to learn it and help increase its usefulness."
The Calgary Esperanto Centre offers language classes for all levels of students, as well as playing host to various speeches in Esperanto on subjects ranging from puppetry to the aquatic theory of evolution.
Created in the 1880s by Dr. Ludovic Lazar Zamenhof, a Jewish eye doctor in what is now Poland, Esperanto was conceived as a way to bridge the many language gaps that separate different regions. In creating Esperanto, Zamenhof mixed elements from several languages, such as Latin, Spanish and French, in his attempt to create a dialect that would avoid many of the idiosyncrasies that make so many of the world’s languages so difficult to learn.
Perhaps the main problem facing the Esperanto movement today is that many people don’t see the language as being useful. Yaki argues that Esperanto works well as a gateway to learning several other languages. He also says that he has found it to be useful in his travels around that world.
"I’ve travelled to quite a few places around the world and I’ve got friends wherever I go because of Esperanto," he says. "I correspond by e-mail with people from all over the world and get a view of it that the average person doesn’t."
This use can be found in the Pasporta Servo program, which involves 1,200 homes in more than 80 countries, offering free accommodations to Esperanto speakers. Paul Hopkins, a volunteer at the Esperanto centre, has used the program both as a guest and as a host. He says that one of the advantages of Esperanto in non-English speaking countries is that Esperanto speakers are more willing to converse with you, whereas English speakers often know only what is required for their jobs. "It’s a culture of communication," he says.
Though some estimates put the number of Esperanto speakers worldwide as high as two million (as opposed to the approximately 1,075,000,000 who speak the world’s most spoken language, Mandarin) – due to a boost in popularity and accessibility via the Internet – Esperantists have a long way to go to reach the goal of being the world’s second language. Hopkins is pessimistic about the chances of one day reaching this goal.
"I think that if people did the rational thing, Esperanto certainly would be adopted as the second language of the world. I am not so sure that people will do the rational thing," he says.
Yaki and Hopkins are currently in the midst of planning the 2007 Pan-American Esperanto Conference, which will be held in Calgary next May. They expect it will play host to more than 200 Esperanto enthusiasts from around the world. |
Copyright ©2006 FFWD. All rights reserved.