Esperanto Anniversary and its origins in Southport.

Exactly 130 years ago on 26 July, an eye specialist in Poland called Dr L. L. Zamenhof, published a slim book detailing the structure and vocabulary of a wholly new language (which was not given any name in the book). The pen name Zamenhof chose was Doktoro Esperanto—and people who started learning the new language simply called it by the “surname” of its author, Esperanto. It had an early following in Southport, as we shall see.

The main goal of the new language was to simplify international communication by providing a common language that is both easy to master and culturally neutral. It took off slowly, firstly in the Russian Empire, then gaining support throughout the world. There are now Esperanto speakers in about 120 countries. I am one of them.


Is Esperanto inferior to natural languages?
Some people think that, as it is a constructed language, Esperanto must be somehow “worse” than languages like English or French or German. This is not the case; Esperanto is a fully developed language. Although it started as a theoretical construct, it has had an active community of users ever since its creation, and the language naturally absorbed new words and new ways to express things as people were using it, just like a natural language would.
The Esperanto community strongly supports the concepts of language diversity and language rights. All languages are valuable, and it's important that the bigger languages do not push local and minority languages out of use.


How many Esperanto speakers are there?
The precise number of Esperanto speakers is hard to gauge. It has been estimated that there are a few hundred thousand proficient speakers of Esperanto in the world and up to two million people who are familiar with the language to some extent. In my experience there are enough speakers to make learning the language worthwhile.


Early Esperanto speakers in Southport
From dusty, yellowing directories and old magazines I have been able to discover some of the history of Esperanto in Southport well over a century ago. One of the first people in Southport I can trace learning Esperanto was Mrs Charlotte Ferguson of 40, Richmond road, Birkdale who took up the study of the new tongue in 1903. Other early enthusiasts included Miss L. L. Scott of 69 Promenade, Southport, J. A. BALSHAW of 7 Joy Street and Robert W. Battersby of 14 Denmark Road, Churchtown, all of whom took up Esperanto in 1905. A local vicar Rev. Dr. George Nickson of St. Andrews Vicarage learned Esperanto in 1906. Someone called O. A. Mottram of 20 Melling Road, Southport learned at some time in 1908.

An Esperanto Society in Southport was found in June 1908. Its secretary was P. Foster of, 33 Westbourne Road, Birkdale and its president was Rev. J. ASHBY. An Esperanto magazine in 1913 suggested that it met every Monday evening at the Imperial Café in Lord Street.

Where is Esperanto used today?
People use Esperanto every day in a wide range of countries in various ways: when travelling, at international conferences, on the Internet, for work, or in family life. Normally Esperanto is used between people who don't have the same mother tongue. When used in this way, Esperanto acts as a "bridge language" between people from different language backgrounds. That's Esperanto's strength – it works well as a bridge across national borders.
Some Esperanto speakers use the language to read news about events in various countries, written by the very people who live in those countries. And others enjoy books that were originally written in a minority language, which have been translated into Esperanto but not into the reader's mother tongue.
Where can I start learning Esperanto?
An online course called Duolingo is, hands down, the best free system for learning Esperanto. You certainly won’t regret the time you spend on Esperanto, a very practical way to overcome language barriers.
Bill Chapman
The illustrations show:
a crowd of Esperanto speakers
a logo (in Esperanto’s green colour) showing Esperanto as a language of peace
a zeppelin which crossed frontiers in the same way as Esperanto does
a cutting from a 1908 Esperanto magazine