Open AccessEsperanto: A Language Policy Assessment
Author(s) -
Humphrey Tonkin
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
język, komunikacja, informacja
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 1896-9585
DOI - 10.14746/jki.2017.12.10
Subject(s) - multilingualism , ideology , language planning , linguistics , language policy , value (mathematics) , sociology , work (physics) , economic justice , political science , computer science , philosophy , law , engineering , politics , mechanical engineering , machine learning
Unlike most projectors of planned international languages, the creator of Esperanto, L.L. Zamenhof, was as interested in status planning as in corpus planning. Zamenhof’s project was complete enough to be used as a means of communication, but incomplete enough to allow the community of Esperanto speakers to do much of the work of turning his project into a full-fledged language. Zamenhof himself saw the language as a means to an end, and, quite early on, entrusted the development of the language to its speakers while he pursued more lofty ideological goals. Recently scholars have turned their attention to the ideological side of the Esperanto community in general, including the strong commitment of Esperanto speakers to linguistic justice and to a greater awareness of the value of multilingualism and linguistic diversity.