Kongreso in Anglujo

Nippys (waitresses) in Lyons' Corner House on London's Oxford Street last week eyed their patrons carefully. If the customer was a day-to-day white-collar snack-snatcher, the nippy said, as usual: "Yes sir, your order please, sir." But if he was a bizarre, loosely clad foreigner, the nippy said: "Si Sinjoro, vian ordenon, mi petas, Sinjoro." In nearby University of London's University College, some 1,400 delegates of 40 nationalities were gathered in a Congress of the International Esperanto League, and Lyons Restaurants (the Childs chain of England) never miss a trick.

In their sessions the Esperantists discussed only one thing: how to popularize their synthetic lingo. Though the League boasts more than 1,500,000 Esperantists all over the world, Esperanto has been threatened for four years by the popularity of Basic English, the skeleton tongue (vocabulary: 850 words) designed by Orthologer Charles Kay Ogden. Esperanto in Esperanto means "one who hopes." The somewhat frantic hope of last week's Kongreso in Londono, Anglujo, was that Esperanto should not become a dead language before it ever showed real signs of life in either of its intended capacities:

1) as a stimulant to international trade,

2) as a sedative to international temper. Esperanto is most widely used and

taught in Holland and Sweden. In its week of deliberations and celebrations, the Kongreso made one little, one giant stride into new territories: They persuaded London's County Council to provide night-school courses in Esperanto, France's Government to urge all State schools to teach Esperanto.

The artificial language they hoped to spread was invented by a patient Polish physician, Lazaro Ludovico Zamenhof, who published his work in 1887. His language looks like a Balkan patter, sounds like a Romance patois. Though it runs on rules like rails, it lends itself to precise shades of meaning. In 1921, as a test, the Paris Chamber of Commerce had two Esperantists translate delicate texts of French into Esperanto, then had two others turn them back into French; the final texts were almost identical with the originals. The language has only 16 simple rules of grammar, to which there are no exceptions. Its huge vocabulary is compounded from roots common to many languages. For instance, from the root pres (to print) are derived presajho (a piece of printed matter), represi (to reprint), presejo (a printing establishment), presigi (to have printed), presisto (a printer), presilo (a printing press), nepresebla (unprintable), presinda (worthy of printing), presacho (an abominable piece of printing).

Esperanto literature contains some 4,000 books, pamphlets, journals, magazines. In Sweden, an Esperanto magazine is printed in braille.

The foregoing paragraph translated into Esperanto: La Esperanto literaturo havas cirkau kvar mil librojn, pamflepojn, jurnalojn, gazetojn. Enn Svedujo oni presas gazeton Esperanta en "braille."

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