Esperanto Revolutionaries and Geeks: Language Politics, Digital Media and the Making of an International Community [Fians] (fb2) читать постранично, страница - 71

La Esperantisto. Also noteworthy is the -ata/-ita debate (summarised in De Hoog et al. 1961), on verb tenses and forms of the past participle, where the Akademio played a decisive role.

[20] This advice comes from Claude Piron (1989), to whom Esperantos internationality depended on the language being understood by Esperanto speakers from culturally and geographically distant places, such as China and Japan. Along surprisingly similar lines, also Max Weber (1949: 58—59) prompted social scientists to write for a 'Chinese reader'—meaning someone less prone to share the commonsense assumptions of Western scholars.

[21] For instance, the Plena Manlibro de Esperanta Gramatiko (Wennergren 2005)—PMEG, Complete Manual of Esperanto Grammar, whose abbreviation jokingly reads as 'pomego', big apple—answers the pioneers' call for developing and normalising the language. The PMEG goes beyond Zamenhofs Fundamento and also covers aspects like punctuation and prefixes of units of measurement (such as gigawatts, GW), which were not set in Esperantos sixteen basic grammar rules.

[22] Even though, as highlighted before, such terminology and categorisation are mine, not Zamenhof's.

[23] Before the foundation of SAT and SAT-Amikaro, there had already been a left-wing, workers' Esperanto movement in France. Esperantists acted mostly through non-Esperanto associations and published articles in the left-leaning magazine EHumanite, reporting on the 1905 Universal Congress of Esperanto and 'stressing the value of Esperanto for the workers, who do not have the means for luxuries such as learning foreign languages' (Forster 1982: 189).

[24] Ironically enough, as we will see, his cap read 'Antaŭen', which is the imperative form of 'to move forward' in Esperanto.

[25] Public programmes, such as the European Voluntary Service and Service Civique, have given young people the opportunity to participate as paid volunteers for a certain period in French associations. While increasing youth's participation in the associative milieu, such programmes have also made their volunteering conditional on remuneration, which often results in their involvement being terminated when the financial support ends.

[26] In some cases, one's link to a particular association is also linguistically marked. Several members of SAT-Amikaro who do not use Esperanto elsewhere distinguish 'ci' and V' as, respectively, the informal and the formal second person singular in Esperanto. Doing so marks a refusal to use a linguistic form of deference, emphasising the equality between every language user. Unintentionally, this performative use of Esperanto also discloses their mother tongue, since this distinction is drawn from the difference between 'tu' and ' vous' in French and is not used by Esperanto speakers from other linguistic backgrounds. Nonetheless, 'ci' as an informal second person singular also figures in some early Esperanto texts, as well as in documents from the French Esperanto Youth Organisation (JEFO, the youth branch of Esperanto-France) from the 1970s. Nowadays, however, it is a linguistic mark often associated with SAT-Amikaro and, to a lesser extent, with SAT, while 'vi' consolidated its position as the standard second person singular in Esperanto.

[27] Several SAT-Amikaro members were against using Brexit to promote Esperanto. For them, the idea of advancing it as a candidate working language for the EU would turn Esperanto into a hegemonic language. If the learning and use of Esperanto were to become a requirement in some settings, this would undermine the language's non-compulsory character.

[28] The figure refers to people who registered to learn Esperanto, since Duolingo does not disclose data on how many users effectively complete its courses.

[29] Here I follow Boellstorff's (2008: 20—21) distinction between 'virtual' and 'actual' worlds. Such choice of terminology avoids the trap of considering the 'virtual' as opposed to the 'real' world, which, in turn, would imply that technology makes 'real' life less real.

[30] Such as in the case of 'software' and 'drone', as discussed in Chapter 5.

[31] One of JEFO's most traditional undertakings was the organisation of FESTO, a week-long Esperanto festival taking place annually since 1996. FESTO was, however, discontinued after 2014 due to a shortage of volunteers to organise it.

[32] In 2016, the age limit for membership at TEJO was also increased from 30 to 35 years old. This was aimed at expanding the associations membership and ensuring that some active members could remain for longer.

[33] TEJO proved to be an exception in this regard. Through feeding active social media profiles, encouraging young Esperantists to participate in YouTube videos about student life, offering free magazine samples to those who finish Duolingos skill tree and organising online meetings, TEJO succeeded in converting a number of online learners into members.

[34] In this regard, it is interesting to note the strategy that Esperantists developed to bypass the hesitancy of saying 'good morning', 'good afternoon' or 'good evening' in online communica- tion, particularly in spoken chats. For not knowing in which time zone their interlocutors are, Esperantists frequently greet each other saying 'bonan tageron , meaning 'good fragment of the

day'.

[35] As explained before, the printed database of Pasporta Servo also became available online in 2008. However, Pasporta Servo's interface was meant to be accessed through the computers Internet browser and, for this reason, it is not as user-friendly for mobile phone users as Amikumus.

[36] Such as the members of the political party EDE (Europe-Democracy-Esperanto), which attempts to gather support for Esperanto within the framework of the political institutions of the European Union (see Fians 2018).