Fundamentals of Esperanto

The grammatical rules of this language can be learned in one

sitting.

Nouns have no gender & end in -o; the plural terminates in -oj

(pronounced -oy) & the accusative, -on (plural -ojn).

Amiko, friend; amikoj, friends; amikon & amikojn, accusative

friend & friends.

Adjectives end in –a & take plural & accusative endings to

agree with things.

Ma amiko is my friend.

All verbs are regular & have only one form for each tense or

mood; they are not altered for person or number. Mi havas

bonajn amikojn is simply to say I have good friends.

Adverbs end in –e.

La bonaj amiko estas ie. The good friend is here.

A new book appears in Esperanto every week. Radio stations in

Europe, the United States, China, Russia & Brazil broadcast in

Esperanto, as does Vatican Radio. In 1959, UNESCO declared the

International Federation of Esperanto Speakers to be in accord with

its mission & granted this body consultative status. The youth

branch of the International Federation of Esperanto Speakers, UTA,

has offices in 80 different countries & organizes social events where

young people curious about the movement may dance to recordings

by Esperanto artists, enjoy complimentary soft drinks & take home

Esperanto versions of major literary works including the Old

Testament & A Midsummer Night’s Dream. William Shatner’s first

feature-length vehicle was a horror film shot entirely in Esperanto.

Esperanto is among the languages currently sailing into deep space

on board the Voyager spacecraft.

Esperanto is an artificial language

constructed in 1887 by L.

L. Zamenhof, a polish

oculist. I first came

across Fundamento Esperanto, the text

which introduced this system

to the world, as I travelled abroad

following a somewhat difficult period

in my life. It was twilight & snowing on the

railway platform just outside

Warsaw where I had missed

my connection. A man in a crumpled track suit

& dark glasses pushed a cart

piled high with ripped & weathered volumes—

sex manuals, detective stories, yellowing

musical scores & outdated physics textbooks,

old copies of Life, new smut,

an atlas translated,

a grammar, The Mirror, Soviet-bloc comics,

a guide to the rivers &

mountains, thesauri, inscrutable

musical scores & mimeographed physics books,

defective stories, obsolete sex manuals—

one of which caught my notice

(Dr. Esperanto,

Zamenhof’s pen name, translates as He Who Hopes) &

since I had time, I traded

my used Leaves of Grass for a copy.

Mi amas vin, bela amiko.

I’m afraid I will never be lonely enough.

There’s a man from Quebec in my head,

a friend to the purple martins.

Purple martins are the Cadillac of swallows.

All purple martins are dying or dead.

Brainscans of grown purple martins suggest

these creatures feel the same levels of doubt

& bliss as an eight-year-old girl in captivity.

While driving home from the brewery

one night this man from Quebec heard a radio program

about purple martins & the next day he set out

to build them a house

in his own back yard. I’ve never built anything,

let alone a house,

not to mention a home

for somebody else.

I’ve never unrolled a blueprint onto a workbench,

sunk a post,

or sent the neighbor’s kid pedalling off

to the store for a bag full of nails.

I’ve never waited ten years for a swallow.

Never put in aluminum floors to smooth over the waiting.

Never piped sugar water through colored tubes

to each empty nest lined with newspaper shredded

with strong, tired hands.

Never dismantled the entire affair

& put it back together again.

Still no swallows.

I never installed the big light that stays on through the night

to keep owls away. Never installed lesser lights,

never rested on Sunday

with a beer on the deck surveying

what I had done

& what yet remained to be done, listening to Styx

while the neighbor kids ran through my sprinklers.

I have never collapsed in abandon.

Never prayed.

But enough about purple martins.

As we speak, Esperanto is being corrupted

by upset languages such as Interlingua,

Klingon, Java & various cryptophasic tongues.

Our only hope of reversing this trend is to write

the Esperanto epic. Through its grandeur

& homegrown humility, it will spur men

to freeze the mutating patios so the children

of our children’s children may dwell in this song

& find comfort in its true texture & frame.

It’s worth a try. As I imagine it, it ends

in the middle of things. Every line of the work

is a first & a last line & this is the spring

of its action. Of course, there’s a journey

& inside that journey, an implicit voyage

through the underworld. There’s a bridge

made of boats; a carp stuffed with flowers;

a comic dispute among sweetmeat vendors;

a digression on shadows; men clapping

in fields to scare away crows; an unending list

of warships: The Unternehmen, The Impresa,

The Muyarchi, Viec Lam, The Przedsiebiorstwo,

The Indarka, The Enterprise, L’Entreprise,

Entrepeno... One could go on. But by now,

all the characters have turned into swallows

& bank as one flock in the sky—that is,

all except one. That’s how we finally learn

who the hero was all along. Weary & old,

he sits on a rock & watches his friends

fly by one by one out of the song,

then turns back to the journey they all began

long ago, keeping the river to his right.

Source: Facts for Visitors (The University of California Press, 2005)