Esperanto and language justice

Miko Sloper is a man of many talents, a philosophy graduate, mathematician, language teacher, musician. As I sit down to have a brief talk about his latest interests in Auroville, I notice his beard and hair, which were previously white, have turned green, so I start the interview  by asking…why green?

Miko: I speak Esperanto and I teach Esperanto at the Language Lab, so Esperanto uses green in its flag and as its general symbol. Actually, Esperanto speakers very often refer to each other as ‘’verdulo’’ (green person). There is a lovely mythological figure in Celtic culture called ‘’The Green Man’’. He’s got all kinds of foliage coming out of his features. Instead of a beard, he’s got oak leaves; instead of hair, he’s got tendrils and vines, so I tried to invoke green as the colour of Esperanto and of the Green Man.

Auroville Today:  How and why did you come to Auroville? 

Two years ago, I was in Chennai for the music and dance festival and a friend of mine said: ‘Miko, you’re just a couple of hours away from Auroville by bus. You need to see Auroville’. I asked, ‘Why? What is in Auroville?’  She said, ‘it’s very hard to explain, but trust me, just go there, you’ll love this place. It’s a city of the future, it’s a city where they’re going international and making new things happen.’ I thought three or four days would be enough to figure the place out. But I ended up staying eight days because I read that there was this Om Choir, and that just rang a bell to me. I usually wear an Om ring, I have an Om shirt and in the United States I used to wear a cap that said “I root for the Om team”. So I ‘Om a lot’ (laughter).

So, I joined  the Om choir and it completely changed my life. I thought, ‘My God, there is a place where an Om choir is one of the “normal things”, and where people get together and make spontaneous music based on Om – this is my city.’ Of course, after that, I ran into many things, African Pavilion and drums, or just meeting people on the streets, so I completely fell in love with the place.

I had to leave after eight days because I had an Esperanto conference to go to. Eight days of immersion in this culture really convinced me that this is the place I wanted to be, so I left knowing that I would come back, which I did in late August 2019. I’ve been here ever since.

How did  Esperanto come into your life?

About thirty years ago, I had a teaching career in the US. I started teaching internationally, and my first job was in Israel. Because of taxes and visa bureaucracy, it is very common in that type of career that you spent two years in one country, then two years in another and so on. I thought to myself, ‘I’m not gonna learn Hebrew in two years, and, after that, where am I gonna be? In Japan? I’m not gonna learn Japanese in two years, and then I’ll be in Brazil?’ So I figured I should learn the international language. I had a two-week intensive class in Esperanto in San Francisco and then I flew to Israel, contacted the local Esperanto community and found out that I could have conversations with these people after a two-week Esperanto class. 

So, one of the reasons I’m here in Auroville is to demonstrate that Esperanto is a useful tool for internationalism, and it should have a place here. I’m teaching in the Language Lab, and while we have an Esperanto club that meets once in a while, there is still not that much interest in it, maybe because The Mother didn’t specifically approve it.

I know it would be unrealistic to adopt Esperanto as an official language starting next week, but I’m not advocating that. This is the city of the future, so I think the city of the future should use a neutral international language. People could come here from all over the world and speak not only their own mother language but also Esperanto. The other obvious place for Esperanto would be the United Nations. Right now the UN has six official languages but more than 90% of the communication and international transactions are in English. Native English speakers have a huge advantage in the world now, and as an English speaker, I have the same advantage. But I’m more interested in justice, and the justice implied in using a neutral language is really profound. Everybody that I know in the Esperanto world that doesn’t speak English as a first language appreciates that. I’m hoping that actually some day the World Esperanto Congress will happen in Auroville.

Box 2

Esperanto is the most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language. It was created by Polish ophthalmologist L. L. Zamenhof in 1887.Zamenhof’s goal was to create an easy and flexible language that would serve as a universal second language to foster world peace and international understanding, and to build a “community of speakers”, as he believed that one could not have a language without such a community.

The word esperanto translates into English as “one who hopes”. The vocabulary, orthography, phonology, and semantics are all thoroughly European. The vocabulary, for example, draws about three-quarters from Roman languages (French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and Romanian), with the rest split between Greek, English and German. The syntax has Germanic and Slavic tendencies, with internal tensions when these disagree; the semantics and phonology have been said to be Slavic.

Estimates vary of the number of Esperanto speakers, but 60,000 may be speaking it regularly and 500,000 occasionally.

Mother on the Auroville language 

They’re beginning to wonder what Auroville’s language will be. I think it will be a language that will... (Laughing) The children are setting the example: they know several languages and make sentences with words from every language, and... it’s quite colorful! Little A.F. knows Tamil, Italian, French and English; he is three years old, and (laughing), it makes a fine muddle! Something like that.

People who speak Esperanto wrote me an official letter to say how many they are (a considerable number), and that they would like their Esperanto to be Auroville’s language.... There are lots of people who speak that language, lots. Everywhere, I think. I got that letter two or three days ago. 

But Auroville’s language, let it just be born spontaneously! 

Yes, spontaneously, naturally! Ah, we shouldn’t intervene.”