FROM LATIN TO ESPERANTO: A POTHOLE-LADEN LINGUISTIC JOURNEY

INTRODUCTION
Although our performance as mankind certainly belies the fact that we have really been a civilized society since the days of Ancient Greece and Rome, we have nonetheless managed to derive a beneficial communication means known as spoken and written language.

Linguistic scholars have painstakingly studied, analyzed, and classified tongues throughout the world into numerous dynasties, clans, families, groups, branches, sub-branches, or whatever, in the interest of enlightening those who may be seeking knowledge and understanding as to why we say and write things as we do and have done for so many centuries.

Society’s most influential languages of our present day include what the scholars have defined as falling under the Indo-European umbrella. These are the Balto-Slavic, Celtic, Germanic or Teutonic, Indo-Iranian, and the Italic or Romance categories, each embracing numerous different tongues, but all having common parentage at various levels.

SCOPE
This particular study has been confined to the following Germanic and Romance languages which are official to the major western European countries, along with their prime antecedents, Greek and Latin:
· Italian
· Portuguese
· Spanish
· French
· German
· Dutch
· English
· Danish
· Norwegian
· Swedish
· Icelandic

Obviously, the above list expands the global coverage to include all of North and South America, Australia and New Zealand, and ex-colonies in Africa and Asia. To it we’ve chosen to add Esperanto, a Romance- and Germanic-related linguistic endeavor developed on what amounts to an independent basis in the late nineteenth century, and very much alive today. Considerably more attention will be devoted to this tongue further on, due to its significance relative to the others.

Our selected group represents the principal languages spoken by roughly one-sixth of the modern world population, and more like two-thirds of what we know as the western world.

Icelandic is included because it definitely falls into the Scandinavian category, and also stands out as one which has failed to change with the times over many centuries, having been relatively isolated from its three major sisters, Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish. The odd combination of similarity and dissimilarity is quite unique.

RATIONALE
The question on the reader’s mind at this point is most likely what purpose is being served by this linguistic exercise. Perhaps we weren’t even sure ourselves until rather recently, i.e. well into the analytical process. Then, in a sudden revelation, more or less, the why factor became very apparent.

Mankind took over its rule on earth with nothing but untapped resources to exploit. Without the remotest imagination compared to our beings today, focus was placed strictly on life’s necessities. As millions of years came and went, the effort to more effectively utilize our natural surroundings was extremely gradual, to say the least.

Now, we can look with great pride at the technological progress we’ve achieved in such areas as space exploration, medicine, computer technology, and otherwise, especially from the close of World War II onward, which absolutely borders on the phenomenal. How could we have envisioned so much accomplishment as recently as 1945?

To make the long story short, our occupation of this planet began with the utmost in simplicity. Describing the whole business as gradual amounts to a gross understatement. One striking example is failure to recognize the potential of electricity until the early eighteenth century, when it had been with and identifiable to us from the very start. Why did we have to wait so long for Benjamin Franklin’s striking “discovery”?

Furthermore, why didn’t someone prior to Thomas Edison realize how this basic energy source could be put to effective use?

Although we’d known for quite a while that light traveled at a rate of 186,000 miles per second, it wasn’t until the twentieth century before the whiz kids at IBM Corporation could determine how to put such speed to use for communication and related purposes.

So much for scientific and technological advancement having proceeded at the proverbial snail’s pace, requiring centuries of tortoise-like movement, even after we allegedly became “civilized” during the Ancient Greek and Roman reigns. Our subject at hand is actually man’s means of spoken and written communication through language.

THE SAGA OF MODERN-DAY LANGUAGE
It seems we might safely say that effective interpersonal communication really began with the Greeks and later the Romans during their respective glory days. This isn’t intended to imply that the Hebrews and Phoenicians of earlier ages merely grunted at one another. They were obviously able to speak and compose as meaningfully within their own environment as we do in ours now. The same capabilities existed among the peoples of the Far East, darkest Africa, and the open plains of North and South America.

The point we wish to make, however, is that the words we use throughout the dominating western world at present stem from three sources: Greek, Latin, and Germanic. Whatever we say or jot down on paper is the end result of a distillation process that has taken place for over two millennia.

Are we thus able to say with full confidence that this linguistic evolution has reached a stage of complete refinement? Of course we can’t. Every national language in use today is sufficiently riddled with rules, non-rules, and exceptions to make full mastery a virtual impossibility, except by those relatively rare folk somewhat divinely endowed with comprehension-grasping genius.

What we’ve chosen herein to constitute as “lingogenesis” came from those halcyon empire days, wherein the rules for speaking and writing were far from simple. In fact, they couldn’t have been more unduly complicated. At such stage in mankind’s development, the ugh sounds and finger signs of past eras had already evolved into a strong desire to make oneself a full hundred per cent clear when communicating with a fellow being or beings, but has never quite made the grade.

Although Greek served as the source of numerous Latin words, it has in many cases simply bypassed its neighbor and moved directly into the Romance and Germanic offspring, having become firmly so entrenched.

While Greek and Latin went on to spread their verbal influence among the Mediterranean nations, Germanic tongues enjoyed the same effect throughout northern Europe. Although English was decidedly one of the latter’s offspring, the Normans brought French with them when they conquered Britain in 1066, and remained as dominating occupants for a few hundred years. Upon eventually moving out, they nevertheless left behind a clear Romanesque effect.

English therefore developed into a dual heritage language, and stands today as one whereby a person has the choice of relating to either the Germanic or Greek/Latin roots in uttering a verbal or composing a written statement. Of course, those among us to whom it is a native tongue perform this so-called feat without considering or, in most cases, realizing why.

BACK TO THE ORIGINS ONCE AGAIN
Whereas these three prime source languages obviously came about through their own evolutionary processes, Latin bears strong evidence of having been carefully structured through the use of certain scholarly application. In order that anything whatsoever might be expressed in the clearest and understandable fashion, rules had to have been laid out for its human exponents to follow. Nowhere else in the linguistic universe has such methodology been so apparent, even to the relatively casual observer.

This is especially true in the case of verb tenses, providing for distinct means whereby the indicative, subjunctive, and imperative moods were each broken down into active and passive voice, covering present, imperfect, present perfect, past perfect, future, and future perfect time element factors. In turn, nouns, pronouns, and adjectives all were required to bear gender (masculine, feminine, neuter) and case (nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, ablative) designations. Even a couple of touches were thrown in for good measure, such as vocative and locative degrees.

We tend to suspect that the proclivity of irregular verb endings was already in existence at the time the scholars sat down and laid out the rules. Changing them could well have been deemed as nothing short of heretical.

By way of further hard and fast rulemaking, any combination of nouns or pronouns with the adjectives by which they were modified had to show full agreement as to case, number (i.e. singular or plural) and gender.

Did so much strictness indeed make sense? Yes, of course it did to the erudite upper crust types who dwelt in the acts of writing prose, correspondence, dramatic works, flowery speeches, and the like. Still, what about the average blokes on the street? Can the fact really be accepted that these common folk employed the full range of grammatical regulations spread out for their use?

The answer to this question is a straightforward no. The most explanatory example lies in our present-day English-speaking population, where a highly (in many ways) simplified language ranks among the more difficult subjects for students to master, in addition to which it gets horrifically butchered when spoken or written down by absolutely countless millions.

On this factual premise, could one honestly believe that those ancient Roman adults and children fared any better than their modern-day counterparts? It may be clearly presumed that a much more watered down means of expression reigned in those days. Undoubtedly, even those of the high and mighty set must have found need to resort to their grammatical rulebooks to make sure the correct verb form or whatever applied in their speeches and compositions.

A fairly cursory review of a Latin dictionary today will reveal certain allowable spelling alterations, which probably came about through errors which became so commonly applied in due course that the Roman society deigned to accept them.

THE ROAD BETWEEN YESTERYEAR AND NOW
We refer back to the title of this piece, where we label such a road to be heavily laden with potholes. No descriptive statement seems to be more appropriate.

Latin’s daughter tongues, principally Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, and French, as well as those Germanic offspring Dutch, English, Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, and Icelandic have undergone a long-run trend toward gradual simplification ever since the days of the Caesars and Attila the Hun. There has been some notable success. However, none of these updated language versions has managed to unencumber itself fully from irregular verb forms, pronunciation variations due to all sorts of accent marks or otherwise, retention of archaic spelling, and other downright failures to make the transition as complete as it could have been. Somehow, the members of the hoity-toi population wish to retain as many complexities as possible for sheer traditional reasons. As a matter of fact, we’ve found a few to have been added in certain cases.

THE QUEST FOR A LINGUA FRANCA
Consequently, modern-era school days or adult age study of any common language cited herein calls for carefully memorizing many rather needless rules and exceptions. A lot of students never make out in a satisfactory manner. Universities with liberal arts colleges often require passing marks in at least one foreign tongue, with loss of advanced degree eligibility the price for failure. This hardly seems fair, but has been known to happen.

Over a great many decades, efforts have been expended by skilled linguists to devise easier-to-master languages for international and other intercommunication use. For various reasons, none has ever reached the intended objective. Ironically instead, the overwhelming demand to learn English by citizenry worldwide supposedly fulfills the need. As a consequence, no more popular lingua franca exists than that which was born of Germanic parentage and married temporarily to French.

Yes, English has dropped a whole lot of archaic complexities over the centuries, which has to help the learner somewhat. From the standpoints of spelling and pronunciation rules, though, it doesn’t exactly stand as among the easiest. Despite the remaining shortcomings, this is what the major populace has chosen to be the most appropriate international communication method.

THE GOOD DR. ZAMENHOF
Dr. L.L. Zamenhof was a Polish oculist who entertained a dream similar to a number of others who both preceded and succeeded him – developing a universal language, usable as a common point between speakers of opposite nations. The fruits of his rather tedious endeavor were initially published in 1887.

The man hadn’t just sat week after week in an empty attic quietly putting together what he was to label Esperanto, directly related to the Romance word meaning “hope”. Instead, he had submitted drafts of his work to others for review and comment, then incorporated their more appropriate suggestions into his publishable product.

Esperanto wasn’t yet final, however. A society came into being to study and refine the work even more. Conventions were subsequently held, revisions proposed, accepted or rejected, and the end results eventually presented to the world.

Whereas the outpourings of its predecessors and successors died quiet deaths, Esperanto and its exponents have carried on ever since. It stands as the sole “manufactured” international language which has earned a reasonable degree of public acceptance.

For reasons already given, Dr. Zamenhof’s dream has never achieved anything near complete fulfillment, thanks to the virtually universal clamor to make English the second language to everyone desirous of expanding his or her communicability. Nevertheless, the product he so painstakingly created does indeed live on, and will likely continue to do so in its own right.

ESPERANTO AND ITS TECHNICAL SIGNIFICANCE
The principal feature of this personally structured language is that, in most instances, the simplest of rules are applied. Uniformity reigns throughout, with absolutely no exceptions.

Further key examples of uniformity, in contrast to other languages under surveillance herein, are as below:
· Nominative case nouns end with “o” in the singular and “oj” in the plural;
· Objective case nouns end with “on” in the singular and “ojn” in the plural;
· Adjectives end with “a”, and adverbs with “e”;
· There is a sole definite article related to any noun, namely the term “la”.
· The indefinite article has disappeared.

Pronouns, be they nominative, possessive, or objective, have been reduced to the absolutely simplest of terms.

Similar unique features apply to verbs, wherein the specific tense is determinable by the last one or two letters, and the same applies to each person, singular and plural:
· “as” for the present;
· “i” for the infinitive;
· “is” for the past tense:
· “os” for the future tense;
· “us” for the conditional;
· “u” for the imperative.

The present perfect, past perfect, future perfect, and conditional perfect tenses are formed with the appropriate form of the auxiliary verb “est_”, which corresponds to the English “to be”.

In contrast, when choosing a noun in any of the Romance tongues, one must know which of the two genders it applies, making article and adjectival adjustments as appropriate. German and Icelandic are actually worse, having three. Even Dutch and the other Scandinavian languages have two.

Verbs offer yet more “fun”, with ending changes dependent on the person and gender. This problem extends partly to English as well. Only Dutch, Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish are exempt.

That isn’t all that’s wrong with verbs, in every language of reference here. There are enough irregular endings, in English included, to muddle the mind of any school child, small or large, not to mention the adult endeavoring to master a new tongue.

The so-called “perfect” tenses, i.e. present, past, and future, require an auxiliary verb, which is normally the equivalent of “have”. However, do the Romance languages plus German and Dutch stop there? Heavens no. In certain, at least reasonably specific, cases the form of “be” must be used instead.

Just to complicate the speakers’/writers’ lives even further, the subjunctive, which ought to have died a slow death following the collapse of the Roman Empire, remains alive and well thousands of years later. Under certain fairly definable conditions, the form of any verb is subject to change endingwise under the Romance, German, and Icelandic rules. Fortunately, such usage is extremely limited or virtually non-existent now in Dutch, English, Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish. The student should thank whatever gods may be for this.

One encouraging thing to be said in the Romance and Germanic areas (other than for English) is that the pronunciation rules are hard and fast, at least relatively speaking. There are still a great many exceptions, as you might expect, but they can be readily recognized from the accent marks used. They vary from one language to another, and aren’t altogether too difficult to catch on to.

English actually does retain an umlaut or an accented vowel here and there, but they bring no problem unto themselves. The bugaboo comes from supposed pronunciation rules, which they decidedly are not, but rather colloquial practices. The whole matter can best be described as dialectical, where how you say countless words depends upon where you originated. From the Scottish to the Irish to the Yorkshiremen to the Londonians to the Bostonians to the Deep Southerners to the Texans to the Australians, and still onward to the less developed country peoples who converse in any number of differing Pidgin ways, comprehension isn’t always easy or even possible between two spokesmen who grew up varying distances apart.

Now is a most fitting point to focus once again on Esperanto, language’s masterpiece of carefully structured simplicity. Although adjectives must still agree with the words they modify as to case and number, this should be only a minor inconvenience to the learner, in contrast to any other known language on the face of the earth.

A particular feature to which the Esperanto learner must adapt his or her thinking to, albeit with little difficulty and appreciative understanding, is the very common use of prefixes, infixes, and suffixes. Although they also proliferate in other languages, especially German, Dutch, and English, Dr. Zamenhof’s purpose was to make them fully useful for word conversion, i.e. forming virtually any part of speech from a simple root. The effect is that no other language, English included, offers more flexibility, without the necessity of an “obese” dictionary. The student doesn’t have to remember two entirely different words to denote male and female noun gender, whereas the conversion comes from an easy-to-follow suffix. This is but one example among many.

The most suitable punch line to this exercise is the ability to state that anything a person would wish to say or write in the Latin of yesteryear may also be expressed through modern Esperanto, at least insofar as common, day-to-day terms are concerned. Therefore, by the same token wherein we consider our most ancient ancestors as having been capable of “discovering” and even exploiting electrical energy, à la Ben Franklin and Tom Edison, we’re fully convinced that those Roman scholarly types might well have resorted to the same utmost simplicity as did Dr. Zamenhof.

We’d have little difficulty proving our point by showing a list of a thousand or so common Latin words with the Esperanto terms right alongside. True, German is sometimes the source instead, and we could add numerous examples thereof for good measure.

Nevertheless, such a statement as that above does indeed give rise to a speculative question. Why didn’t those scholars seek pure simplicity in the first place, instead of endeavoring to plow so many complexities into the grammatical rulebook? By way of an equally speculative answer, we suspect that the boys were actually catering to the big-wigs, with an intent to produce a communication means utilizable by those who deemed themselves infinitely superior to the ordinary Joes walking the Roman streets.

Carrying our thesis just a step further, look how many of today’s more erudite citizens, who always know which case, number, and gender to use, or what tense to apply, tend to look down upon the less formally trained in speech and composition. Anyway, it’s a thought.

To add one additional theoretical query to our analysis, let us suppose that the boys with their quill pens or whatever they chose to write with had really devoted their mental prowess to designing a language virtually every citizen could employ with relative ease, and “gone to press” on such basis. What would the likely result be today, after a millennium or two of transitional amendment, so-called refinement, or otherwise? Perhaps the Esperanto-like foundation might have become only semi-recognizable by now, having been riddled over long centuries with exceptions and locally-chosen deviations. Who will ever know?

Still, any such reservations as that shouldn’t wash away our strong belief that we would all be better communicators at this stage, had things begun with the goal of maximum interpersonal understanding, as opposed to fostering presumed snobbishness.