Native Esperanto speakers

Native Esperanto speakers (Esperanto: denaskuloj or denaskaj esperantistoj) are people who have acquired Esperanto as one of their native languages. As of 1996, there were 350 or so attested cases of families with native Esperanto speakers.[1][2] Estimates from associations indicate that there are currently around 1,000 Esperanto-speaking families, involving perhaps 2,000 children.[3] In all known cases, speakers are natively bilingual, or multilingual, raised in both Esperanto and either the local national language or the native language of their parents. In all but a handful of cases, it was the father who used Esperanto with the child. In the majority of such families, the parents had the same native language, though in many the parents had different native languages, and only Esperanto in common.[2][4]

Raising children in Esperanto occurred early in the history of the language, notably with the five children of Montagu Butler (1884–1970). Because of this, some families have passed Esperanto on to their children for several generations.[5] A famous native speaker of Esperanto is businessman George Soros, son of Tivadar Soros, publisher and writer in Esperanto.[6] Also notable are young Holocaust victim Petr Ginz,[7] whose drawing of the planet Earth as viewed from the moon was carried aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia, and Daniel Bovet,[8] the recipient of the 1957 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

Esperanto is not the primary language of any geographic region, outside of temporary gatherings (such as conventions like the World Congress of Esperanto) and isolated offices (such as the World Esperanto Association's central office in Rotterdam). Consequently, native speakers have limited opportunity to meet one another except where meetings are specially arranged. For this reason, many parents consider it important to bring their children regularly to Esperanto conventions such as the annual "Renkontiĝo de Esperanto-familioj" (or "Esperantistaj familioj"; REF, since 1979). Similarly, the annual Children's Congress of Esperanto happens alongside the largest Esperanto convention, the World Congress of Esperanto (Universala Kongreso).

List of noted native speakers

Below is a list of noted native Esperanto speakers.

Grammatical characteristics

The Esperanto of native-speaking children differs from the standard Esperanto spoken by their parents. In some cases this is due to interference from their other native language (the adstrate), but in others it appears to be an effect of acquisition.

Bergen (2001) found the following patterns in a study of eight native-speaking children, aged 6 to 14, who were bilingual in Hebrew (two siblings), Slovak (two siblings), French, Swiss German, Russian, and Croatian.[2]

Malheliĝas kaj ili ankoraŭ estas ĉe la plaĝo. – It's becoming dark and they are still on the beach.
En la sepa, unu infano prenis lian ŝtrumpo. (Standard: lian ŝtrumpon) – At seven o'clock, a child took his sock.
but
Poste li iris kaj poste li prenis en unu mano lia simio. (Standard: lian simion) – Then he went and then he took in one hand his monkey.

Among children that do use the accusative, its usage may be regularized from adult usage, at least at young ages. For example, when a screw dropped out of a lock, a young (≤ 5-year-old) child said it malvenis la pordon. Besides the novel use of mal- with veni 'to come' to mean 'come away from', the accusative is not used in adult speech for motion away, but only motion towards. However, in this case the child generalized the usage of the accusative for direct objects.[10]

Lindstedt, on the other hand, referencing Bergen's study, contends that "it is difficult to find convincing examples of changes introduced by the process of nativisation. All examples proposed seem rather to be due to (1) transfers from the children’s other native languages, (2) differences between the spoken and written register of Esperanto and, in some cases, (3) incomplete acquisition." Some of the features, such as phonological reduction, can be found in the speech of some fluent non-native speakers, while some other, such as the attrition of the accusative, are completely absent from the speech of some native-speaking children.[4]

Word derivation

Native-speaking children, especially at a young age, may coin words that do not exist in the speech of their parents, often for concepts for which Esperanto has a word they do not yet know, by exploiting the morphology of the language. This is analogous to what adult speakers do for concepts where Esperanto lacks a word, and indicates that some of the grammatical alterations that adult learners may find difficult come easily to native-speaking children. For example,[10]

The prefix mal- is extremely productive, and children extend it beyond the usage they hear:
malmiksi 'to separate' (miksi to mix)
malpluvas 'stops raining' (pluvas rains)
malscias 'is ignorant of' (scias knows)
malnuna 'past' (nuna present)
malfari 'to break (un-make)' (fari to make)
maltie 'here' (tie there)
malstartas 'turn off (an engine)' (startas 'starts', standard Esperanto ŝaltas 'switches on')
malĝustigis 'broke' (ĝustigis repaired, made right)
malsandviĉiĝis 'became (a shape) which isn't a sandwich anymore' (sandviĉ-iĝis 'became a sandwich', of a brother playing with cushions)
malstelita 'not surrounded by stars' (of the moon; from stelita 'starred')
malmateno 'evening' (mateno morning)
malio 'nothing' (io 'something'; standard Esperanto nenio 'nothing')
malinterne 'externally' (interne internally)
malgraveda 'no longer pregnant' (graveda pregnant)
elektrujo 'a battery' (elektro electricity)
ventrema 'fat' (tending to belly-ness, from ventro 'belly')
triciklejo 'a place for tricycles'
penisino 'vagina' (peniso penis)
maltajpilo 'delete key' (maltajpi to delete, un-type, from tajpi to type)
nazas 'rubs noses' (nazo nose)
buŝas 'kisses on the mouth' (buŝo mouth)
langeti 'to give a little lick' (diminutive, from lango tongue)
dentumado 'activity with teeth' (dento tooth, -umi doing something undefined with, -ado noun of action)
kuvi 'to have a bath' (kuvo 'tub'; standard Esperanto bani sin 'to bathe oneself')
mukis '(my nose) was running' (muko 'snot', by analogy with sangis 'bled', from sango 'blood')
literiĝas 'the letters are changing' (middle voice, from litero 'letter (of the alphabet)')
ne seĝu sur la divano 'don't sit on the couch' (seĝo 'chair'; standard Esperanto sidu 'sit')
muzi 'to museum' (from muzeo 'museum', misunderstood as muz-ejo 'a place for museuming')
belos 'will be beautiful' (bela 'beautiful'; found in poetry, but not usual in adult speech)
samante kiel mi 'being the same as me (you ...)' (sama same)
rida '(often) laughing' (ridi 'to laugh'; standard Esperanto ridema)
ventuma 'making a breeze' (from ventum-ilo 'a fan')
perblove 'by blowing' (per 'via', blovi 'to blow')
mi superruliĝos vin 'I will roll over you' (an intransitive verb ending in -iĝos won't normally take an object in the accusative case, but here it is necessary because the preposition super 'over' has been moved to the verb rul 'roll'. Without the suffix -iĝos, however, the meaning would be a transitive 'I will roll you over'.)
Ege halte, ege paŭze, ege salte 'very stoppingly, very pausingly, very jumpily'
Ene estas akve 'inside is wet' (akvo 'water'; standard Esperanto is malseke, an adverb being required because no specific thing is wet.)
ludeblo 'the possibility of playing' (ludi to play, -ebla -able)

See also

References

  1. Corsetti, Renato (1996). A mother tongue spoken mainly by fathers. Language Problems and Language Planning 20: 3, 263-73
  2. 1 2 3 Benjamin Bergen (2001), "Nativization processes in L1 Esperanto", Journal of Child Language 28:575–595 doi:10.1017/S0305000901004779
  3. Corsetti, Pinto, & Tolomeo (2004) "Regularizing the regular: The phenomenon of overregularization in Esperanto-speaking children", Language Problems and Language Planning, 28:261–282
  4. 1 2 Jouko Lindstedt (January 2006). "Native Esperanto as a Test Case for Natural Language" (PDF). University of Helsinki – Department of Slavonic and Baltic Languages and Literatures.
  5. For example, the Klünder family (interview with a second-generation native Esperanto-speaker, Esperanto Language Blog, 2013 Jun 13)
  6. Cowan, Alison Leigh (December 16, 2010). "How Do You Say 'Billionaire' in Esperanto?". The New York Times. Retrieved October 27, 2011.
  7. Ginz, Petr. Taglibro de Mia Frato: Memornotoj de Petr Ginz El la Jaroj 1941-1942. Kava-Pech, 2005. (ISBN 8085853795, 9788085853797)
  8. "Daniel Bovet". Nndb.com. 1903-06-19. Retrieved 2012-04-29.
  9. Bergen did not count the set expression saluton! 'hello!', which was used by all the children but involves no active grammar.
  10. 1 2 Corsetti, Pinto, & Tolomeo (2004) "Regularizing the regular The phenomenon of overregularization in Esperanto-speaking children", Language Problems & Language Planning, 28:3, pp. 261–282
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