Bring back Esperanto

The first time I went to Mexico I literally bumped into the language barrier before getting to the hotel.  Posted everywhere on the two-lane road from the airport were roadside signs indicating Tope, 200m.  “Evidently a local town is just ahead,” I thought to myself.  But after passing a half dozen of the ubiquitous cryptograms with no town in sight I wondered aloud when the mysterious Tope would come into view.  “Donde esta Tope” I sputtered in my best Spanish accent retrieved from the cerebral cortex archives where it had been stored for decades after three torturous years of classes at la escuela superior de Passaic, New Jersey.   “Aqui,” laughed the driver, bouncing over the formidable speed bump that kept Mexican drivers from turning the highway into a mach speed, drag racing strip.  “Y aqui,” he added, as the taxi’s shocks creaked over still another bump in the road.  Finally it hits me.  “Tope” means, “speed bump.”  Red faced, the gaff reminded me of my visit to Spain several years earlier when I asked the barber to use the mantequilla on my sideburns, meaning to say “machina” or clippers, but asking instead for the butter!

 I’ve attempted to learn Spanish a half dozen times, most recently when I instructed Sonia, our maid from San Salvador, to try to communicate with me in English while I made an effort to respond in Spanish.  We ended the experiment when the neighbor next door banged on the wall and asked us to keep the yelling down.  It seems that people talk louder when they can’t be understood, simply repeating the same kindergarten phonetics louder and louder as if raising the decibel level to jet engine amplitude is the key to comprehension.  As I found out, however, sometimes screaming Pidgin English at the top of your lungs can be dangerous, particularly when a Para-military Ukrainian border guard is interrogating you on the night train from Budapest to Munkachevo.  It can be frightening when the officer in charge becomes increasingly irate because of your inability to understand his demand that you fill out a document printed in the Cyrillian alphabet.  “Ma-don-nah, ma-don-nah,” he shouts louder and louder, growing progressively more red-faced as we stare back blankly.  The veins in his neck are looking like a snarled telephone cord when my wife Arlene, bless her heart, suddenly “gets it.”  The guard wants to know if we’re bringing any religious objects into the country!  Our hasty disclaimer cools the situation and explains the apoplectic fit that took place earlier while he was screaming “Nar-cot-ticks, nar-cot-ticks” into our uncomprehending ears.

 I think the inability to communicate with each other is the primary reason the world’s populace is about ready to tear itself apart.  People seem so sinister when we can’t understand what they’re saying, particularly if they’re sporting a gold tooth or an ear-to-ear tattoo that looks beautiful in Micronesia but doesn’t have quite the same cache in Lincoln Park.  A Puerto Rican kid from Logan Square walks up to you and asks paso subterraneo? and we’re more likely to give him our watch and run like hell rather than direct him to the subway on the next corner. 

 A century ago French was the second language of the cognoscenti.  To the common man, however, it was more like Greek.  Nowadays international travelers to the major capitals are apt to find a cab driver able to overcharge them in English as well as the local lingo, but the language of MTV and the Home Buying Network still falls far short of universality and the Brooklyn accent remains indecipherable.  Spanish is making a move toward global usage but is stifled by the anti-immigration forces that mischaracterize hard working, family oriented Mexicans as illegal agents of the devil. 

 What the world needs to do is resurrect the Esperanto movement!  

 Esperanto is an artificial language that dates back to 1887 when it was invented by Polish physician Ludwig L. Zamenhoff to enable people of different ethnic backgrounds to communicate, person to person, on an equal basis, making it possible to talk out their differences and resolve their mutual problems.    Esperanto – the name comes from the pseudonym (“Doktoro Esperanto”) used by the author in his first textbook – can be learned much faster than a typical natural language because the grammar is consistant, with only one paradigm for nouns and one paradigm for verbs. There is a simple relation between written and spoken text with about 70% of the vocabulary coming from Romance languages, 20% from German and English and the remainder from Slavic languages.  At the turn of the century the Internacia Lingvo began to gain popularity, people from several dozen nations talking together in a language suitable for transnational intercourse of all sorts.  The World Almanac estimates from two to ten million people spoke Esperanto prior to the Second World War when the great numbers of Esperantists killed in the Nazi death camps effectively decimated the movement throughout Europe.

It’s amazing how quickly rapport is established among foreigners when they are able to exchange even a few words that are mutually understood.  We go from being disconnected and alien to becoming participants taking part in the interaction rather than feeling isolated on the outside looking in.  Oftentimes it is the intention rather than the intonation that can ignite a smile and create rapport.  Looking for an ATM in Ixtapa I shared glum glances with a middle aged lady standing disconsolately by a machine that was unexpectedly out of order.  She patted her stomach and said slowly Deseo dinaro para el desayuno.  I understood instantly and responded, Si, no dinero, no comida.  Bonded by common interest we laughed and made our way to another ATM station that she knew of, and that I otherwise would never have found.  For a few minutes we were connected, struggling with our dialogue but finding pleasure in our momentary alliance.  My gracias and her de nada resonated with far more meaning than ordinarily carried by that desultory exchange of Conversational Spanish 101.

 Perhaps the best translator is the smile that accompanies your query  “¿Dónde está el baño?” is an earnest stab at speaking the language but somehow or other the waitress at the Mexican restaurant cheerfully points my wife toward the door marked Damas.   In the Mercado at Zihuatanejo a shopkeeper asks, “Shmattehs?” an unexpected icebreaker that doubles me up in laughter since he’s used the Yiddish word for rags or anything worthless as his sales pitch.  It’s clear his mastery of the idiom is only a bisel (a little) but I wind up buying a belt with a silver buckle and a tee shirt with Ixtapa embroidered on the front and “Made in Taiwan” printed on the tag.

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