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.

History

Raising children in Esperanto occurred early in the history of the language, notably with the five children of Montagu Butler (1884–1970). Owing to this, some families have passed Esperanto on to their children over several generations. Also notable are young Holocaust victim Petr Ginz, whose drawing of the planet Earth as viewed from the Moon was carried aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia, and Daniel Bovet, the recipient of the 1957 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

In at least one instance, Esperanto was used as a bridge language for a family started by a couple who did not have a native language in common.

thumb|A woman speaking Esperanto

Esperanto is not the primary language of any geographic region, though it is spoken at events 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 that 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 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 speakers of Esperanto. The billionaire George Soros has often appeared on such lists, but Humphrey Tonkin, the translator of Soros's father Tivadar's memoir Maskerado ĉirkaŭ la morto into English (under the title Masquerade: The Incredible True Story of How George Soros’ Father Outsmarted the Gestapo), has disputed this. He has made no statements either way concerning Soros's brother, Paul.

Daniel Bovet, Swiss-born Italian pharmacologist
Petr Ginz, Czech author, artist, and Holocaust victim
Kim J. Henriksen, Danish singer-musician
Ino Kolbe, German author
Carlo Minnaja, Italian writer

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. despite the fact that the French mother consistently used the accusative case in her own speech. Slovak has an accusative case on nouns, French does not. Other children used the accusative in only some of the contexts required by standard Esperanto, largely reflecting usage in their other language. There were other patterns to emerge as well. The Croatian child, for example, used the accusative only on personal pronouns immediately following a verb, a feature of reduction to clitic form common in Croatian (underlined):

::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.

Antonyms in mal-

:The prefix mal- is extremely productive, and children extend it beyond the usage they hear:

::malmiksi 'to separate' (miksi to mix)

::malpluvi 'to stop raining' (pluvi to rain)

::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)

Containers in -ujo

::elektrujo 'a battery' (elektro electricity)

Tendencies in -ema

::ventrema 'fat' (tending to belly-ness, from ventro 'belly')

Places in -ejo

::triciklejo 'a place for tricycles'

Feminine in -ino

::penisino 'vagina' (peniso penis)

Instrument in -ilo

::maltajpilo 'delete key' (maltajpi to delete, un-type, from tajpi to type)

Verbs from nouns

::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')

Verbs from adjectives

::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)

Adjectives from verbs

::rida '(often) laughing' (ridi 'to laugh'; standard Esperanto ridema)

Adjectives from nouns

::ventuma 'making a breeze' (from ventum-ilo 'a fan')

Compounds with prepositions

::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'.)

Adverbs from verbs

::Ege halte, ege paŭze, ege salte 'very stoppingly, very pausingly, very jumpily'

Adverbs from nouns and prepositions

::Ene estas akve 'inside is wet' (akvo 'water'; standard Esperanto is malseke, an adverb being required because no specific thing is wet.)

Nouns from adjectives

::ludeblo 'the possibility of playing' (ludi to play, -ebla -able)

References

External links

About native Esperanto speakers
DENASK-L — Internet discussion group for Esperanto families

History

List of noted native speakers

Grammatical characteristics

See also

References

External links