HOBBIES
ESPERANTO
Esperanto commemorated its 100th anniversary in 1987. Its founder, Ludwig Zamenhof, published his first book in 1887. Now his successors claim about 8 million speakers worldwide.
July 1987 was marked by a stage performance in which one of the most famous lines in English comedy will be spoken as: ‘Perdi unu gepatron estas malfelice; perdi ámbau estas senzorge’.
That is a rough Esperanto version of Lady Bracknell’s stentorian rebuke in Oscar Wilde’s play, The Importance of Being Earnest: ’To lose one parent, Mr Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness’.
The language also has a word for Lady Bracknell’s second most famous phrase. It is,
‘Mansako!’, meaning, ‘A handbag!’. Esperanto -
It’s gathering impetus all the time’, said Mrs Mary Austin, President of the Esperanto Association’s movement in Britujo, or Britain. Dutch telephone boxes explain their intricacies in Esperanto, Radio Peking makes broadcasts in the language, and the Norwegians embroider railway timetables with Esperanto footnotes.
The festival attracted visitors from Australia, Hungary and several countries of
the EEC, whose multi-
The next cultural festival will tackle Charley's Aunt as a suitable sequel to Wilde and Lady Bracknell, in spite of the play’s famous reference to the place ‘where the nuts come from’.
The language was founded in 1887 at Bialystok in Russia by an eye doctor, Ludwik
Zamenhof, who now has a road named after him in Stoke on Trent (next to Esperanto
Way and the home of Britain’s only Esperanto-
The language has gained some academic legitimacy, with a Liverpool University lectureship, a degree course at University College, London and pupils studying at General Certificate of Secondary Education level.
The Esperanto Association and the Esperanto Parliamentary Group worked together to plan the centenary celebrations, which were launched by Mr Merlyn Rees, the former Labour Home Secretary, who is the group’s chairman. Few of the 230 group members speak the language. Mr Rees, cheerfully, admits that he cannot.
Esperanto -