George Cox

CONTENTS

PART I ALPHABET (Alfabeto).

PART II GRAMMAR.

PART III EXERCISES EXERCISE 1.

PART IV PHRASES. Jesaj Frazoj. Affirmative Phrases. Estas vere.

PART V LIST OF PRIMARY WORDS. A Adia? = adieu , farewell ,

INDEX

COMPILED BY
Major-General George Cox
B.A. (Cantab.)

FOURTH EDITION
REVISED

B.E.A. Publications Fund, No. 14

LONDON :
BRITISH ESPERANTO ASSOCIATION
INCORPORATED

[All rights reserved]

Reprinted, January, 1939

Printed in Great Britain

PREFACE TO THE FOURTH EDITION

In this Fourth Edition of a work which, since its first appearance in August, 1906, has had a very favourable reception among English-speaking Esperantists in all parts of the world, advantage has been taken of the necessity for reprinting the work, to make a thorough revision of the text, and to introduce some other improvements.

Major-General Cox, born 1838, the author of the Commentary, died on 27th October, 1909, and the revision of the work has been carried out under the direction of the British Esperanto Association (Incorporated).

Footnotes to the Preface to the First Edition have been introduced to record facts not known to the author at the time.

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION

Esperanto is the International Auxiliary Language created by Dr. L. L. Zamenhof, a doctor of medicine, residing at Warsaw, Poland. It is now hardly necessary to mention this fact, but there was a time, not very long ago, when many people thought that Esperanto was a patent medicine, or new kind of soap, or, in fact, anything except a language!

Its aim is not to displace existing languages, but to be a second language for the world, and its merits are now recognized by many eminent men of all nationalities.[1]

If we consider the enormous advantages of a common language, understood by all, we shall at once confess what a blessing Dr. Zamenhof has conferred upon mankind, for:—

Firstly.—It enables anyone to correspond on any topic, social, commercial, or scientific, with persons of all nationalities.[2]

Secondly.—Books of all descriptions can at once be translated into this common language, and sold all over the world; consequently, scientific and medical men will not have to wait, perhaps years, before some important treatise appears in their own language.

Lovers of fiction would also have at command the works of all the best foreign novelists.[3]

Thirdly.—At international congresses the speeches and discussions could be in Esperanto, and understood by all present, the aid of interpreters being unnecessary, by which great saving of time would be effected.[4]

Fourthly.—Treaties and Conventions with foreign Powers could be drawn up in the international language, and there would be no difficulty in determining their exact signification.[5]

Esperanto was first introduced into Great Britain by Mr. Joseph Rhodes, of Keighley, Yorkshire, who formed the first group in that town in 1902. Shortly afterwards, in January, 1903, a group was formed in London, under the auspices of Mr. W. T. Stead, Editor of the "Review of Reviews," Miss E. A. Lawrence, and Mr. J. C. O’Connor, M.A., Ph.D., which resulted in the foundation of the present London Esperanto Club. The first English-Esperanto Gazette was founded by Mr. H. Bolingbroke Mudie, in November, 1903; this was followed in January, 1905, by "The British Esperantist," the official organ of the British Esperanto Association, which was then founded as the official organization of the Esperantists of the British Empire. Progress in the language was at first slow, but it is now advancing by leaps and bounds, and there are at present, in England, Ireland, and Scotland, some 60[6] societies, groups, and clubs, affiliated to the British Esperanto Association. There is also now an American Esperanto Association, with already a large number of energetic groups.[7]

I hope that those who take up this Commentary on Esperanto will not think it necessary to wade through all its pages before they can read and write the language. All that is necessary for this purpose is to read the 16 simple rules, written by Dr. Zamenhof himself (par. 94), and a few paragraphs and examples on the Formation of Words (par. 40), and on the Parts of Speech (pars. 103, 107, 125, 149, 159, 238, 249, 262). This can easily be done in two or three hours; and then, with the aid of a small English Dictionary, you will be able to write a letter in Esperanto, which will be readily understood by any Esperantist.

Or, you can buy for a few pence various primers, first lessons, or instruction books, most of which contain a small vocabulary of common words. A tiny book, costing 1d., called the "Esperanto Key," weighing 1⁄5th of an ounce, containing a vocabulary of over 1,500 roots, with explanations of the suffixes, formation of words, etc., gives you the language in a nutshell. This little book is already published in nineteen different languages. If you wish to correspond with anyone of a different nation, all you have to do is to write your letter in Esperanto, enclose the "Esperanto Key" in the language of the person you are writing to, and he will understand your letter. This, you may say, is pure nonsense, but I assure you it is true, for on several occasions I have done this myself. In all cases my letters were thoroughly understood, and in two cases I received replies written in Esperanto, within three days of my writing, from persons who had never previously read a word in the language; these replies were in perfectly good Esperanto, with only one or two trifling errors, and I was quite amazed when I got them.

But then you will say, "What is the use of this Commentary?" Well, it is compiled for the use of those who wish to go deeper into the study of this delightful, logical, flexible, and sonorous language, and who wish to write and speak it, not merely sufficiently well to be understood, but to write and speak it in good style. Esperanto, although so extraordinarily easy to learn, has, like every national language, a certain style and elegance of expression of its own. If we translate French, or any other foreign language, literally into English, we see how bald and strange it reads, and probably some sentences would be unintelligible. A language literally translated into Esperanto would be quite intelligible to persons of all nationalities, owing to the fact that Esperanto is a purely logical, clear, and unidiomatic language, and to the use of the accusative case; but the literal translation might be wanting in style, grace, and smoothness, for the order of the words, although perfectly correct grammatically, might, in some cases, entail harshness of sound, and so the easy flow and euphony of the language would be lost.

The standard book for good style in the language is the "Fundamenta Krestomatio" (Fundamental Chrestomathy), or book of extracts for studying a language. This book, containing 458 pages of prose and verse on numerous subjects, was published by Dr. Zamenhof in 1903, and all the articles in it were either written by himself or, if written, as many were, by others, were corrected by him to such a degree that they do not too widely differ from the Doctor’s own style.

The more the student studies this language, the more he will wonder how it could have been created by the brain of one man; for we must remember that Esperanto was not devised by a group of learned men of different nationalities, bringing the knowledge of their own language to bear upon the construction of an entirely new language, but that it was born of one individual after years of intense thought and labour, and it is marvellous how he has discarded the illogical, and introduced the logical and best points of all the European and dead languages into Esperanto. How this result was obtained can best be shown by a short history of the language, taken generally from the Doctor’s article on the subject in the "Krestomatio," page 241, and also from a letter he wrote to a friend, which was first printed by his consent in 1896, and reproduced in "Esperantaj Prozaĵoj," page 239.

The Origin of Esperanto.

Doctor Ludovic Zamenhof, Doctor of Medicine, the inventor of Esperanto, was born on December 3rd (15th N.S.), 1859, at Bialystok (Bjelostok), in the Government of Grodno, West Russia, where he spent his boyhood.[8] The inhabitants of Bjelostok were of four different nationalities, Russians, Poles, Germans, and Jews, all speaking different languages, and generally on bad terms with each other. The boy’s impressionable nature caused him to reflect that this animosity was occasioned by diversity of language, and thus the first seeds of the idea of an International Language were sown. Even at an early age Dr. Zamenhof came to the conclusion that an international language was possible only if it were neutral, belonging to no nationality in particular. When he passed from the Bjelostok gymnasium to the second classical school at Warsaw he was for some time allured by the dead languages, and dreamed of travelling through the world to revive one of them for common use, but he was eventually convinced that this was impracticable owing to the mass of grammatical forms and ponderous dictionaries of those languages.

In his boyhood he learnt French and German, and began to work out the idea of his new language, but when, in the 5th Class of the Gymnasium, he began to study English, the simplicity of its grammar was a revelation to him, and his own grammar soon melted down to a few pages without causing any loss to the language. But his giant vocabularies left him no peace of mind.

He tried to use similar economy in his dictionary as in the grammar, thinking that it did not matter what form a word took if it had a given meaning; so he began to invent words, taking care only that they should be as short as possible. For instance, he argued that the word "conversation" has 12 letters; why should not the same idea be conveyed by two, say, "pa"? He tried this by simply writing the shortest and most easily pronounced mathematical series of joined letters, and these he gave a defined meaning, e.g., ab, ac, ad, ... ba, ca, da, ... eb, ec, ed, ... etc. He, however, soon abandoned this idea, as he found these invented words very difficult to learn, and hard to remember, and thus he came to the conclusion that the word material for the dictionary must be Romance-Teutonic, changed only as regularity and other important conditions of the language required. He soon remarked that the present spoken languages possessed an immense store of ready-made international words known by all nations, and he commenced at once to make use of this unlimited supply.

One day, when he was in the 6th or 7th Class at the Gymnasium he, by chance, observed that the signs over shops had certain terminations, as we might notice in England, for instance, "Surgery," "Bakery," etc., and it then struck him for the first time that these terminations had certain meanings, and that by using a number of suffixes, each always having the same meaning, he might make out of one word many others that need not be separately learnt. This thought shed a ray of light upon his great and terrible vocabularies, and he cried out "The problem is solved!" He at once understood how important it was to make use of this power, which, in the national languages, plays only a blind, irregular and incomplete rÔle. So he began to compare words, and to search out the constant and defined relationship between them. He cast out of his vocabularies a vast series of words, substituting for each huge mass a single suffix, which had always a certain fixed relationship to a root-word. He next remarked that certain words, which he had hitherto regarded as purely roots, might easily become formed words and disappear from the dictionary, such as patr-ino (mother), mal-larĝa (narrow), tranĉ-ilo (knife). Soon after this the Doctor had in manuscript the whole grammar and a small vocabulary.

In 1878, when he was in the 8th Class at the Gymnasium, the language was more or less ready, and his fellow students commenced to study it. On December 17th, 1878, they celebrated the birth of the language by a banquet, at which a hymn was sung, the commencing words being as follows:—

The language then was very different from what it is now, as the following translation will show:—

"Let the enmity of nations fall, fall, for the hour is come. All mankind must be united in one family."

On the table, in addition to the grammar and dictionary, were some translations in the new language.

The Doctor’s fellow students were at first enthusiastic, but meeting with ridicule when they tried to discuss the language with their elders, they soon renounced it, and the Doctor hid his work from all eyes.

After he left school and was at the University, for five years and a half he never spoke of it to anyone. This secrecy tormented him. Compelled to conceal his thoughts and plans, he went scarcely anywhere, took part in nothing, and the best period of his life, his student years, were, for him, his saddest. Occasionally, he sought society, but it failed to enliven him, and he then tried to tranquillize his mind by writing poems in the language he was elaborating.

For six years he worked at perfecting and testing it. This gave him plenty of work, notwithstanding he had considered it ready in 1878; but severe trials showed him that, although it might be ready in theory, it was not so in practice. He had much to cut out, alter, and radically transform. Words, forms, principles, and postulates opposed one another in practice, although each, taken separately, appeared in theory right. Such things as the universal preposition je, the elastic verb meti (to put), the neutral, but definite, ending aŭ, would probably never have entered his head had he proceeded only on theory. Some forms, which appeared to him to possess a mine of wealth, were shown in practice to be useless ballast, and, on this account, he discarded several unnecessary suffixes.

He had thought, in the year 1878, that it was sufficient for the language to have a grammar and vocabulary; the heaviness and want of grace of the language he ascribed to his not knowing it sufficiently well; but practice always kept convincing him that the language required an indescribable "something," a uniting element, giving it life and soul. He therefore avoided all literal translations, and commenced to think in the language.

He soon noticed that his new language was not a mere shadowy reflection of the language he happened to be translating, but was becoming imbued with a life and spirit of its own, and was now no mere lifeless mixture of words, It flowed of itself as flexibly, gracefully, and freely as his own native tongue.

However, another circumstance delayed for a long time its public appearance. He knew that everyone would say, "Your language will be useful to me only when the whole world accepts it, therefore I shall not learn it until I find everyone else is adopting it." This problem gave him much thought till at last it struck him that correspondence was carried on in cipher by means of a key possessed by both parties. This gave him his great idea, namely, to construct his language in the fashion of such a key by inserting in it not only the vocabulary, but the whole grammar in its separate elements. Such a key, alphabetically arranged, would enable anyone possessing the key, giving the meaning of the elements in his own language, to understand without further ado a letter written in Esperanto.

Dr. Zamenhof illustrates this in the "Krestomatio," page 249, by the following sentence:—"I do not know where I left my stick; did you not see it?" Now supposing that a German wished to write this to an Englishman or person of any other nationality, he would translate it from the German into Esperanto as follows, dividing the words into their elements by hyphens:—

Mi ne sci-as, kie mi las-is mi-a-n baston-o-n; ĉu vi ĝi-n ne vid-is?

The Englishman, on receiving the letter, turns to his Esperanto dictionary, or to the Ĉefeĉ Key, if it be enclosed, and reads as follows:—

The above, therefore, in bald English is "I not know where I left my stick; whether you it not have seen (or, did see)?" Now this is perfectly comprehensible to any Englishman. But some may say, "But if the German had written in his own language, and I had found a German dictionary, I could quite as easily have made out his meaning." Now the following is the German for this sentence:—Ich weiss nicht wo ich meinen Stock gelassen habe; haben Sie ihn nicht gesehen?

On referring to the German dictionary, and looking out the words, he would find:—ICH=I, WEISS=white, NICHT=not, WO=where, ICH=I, MEINEN=to think, STOCK=stick, GELASSEN=composed, calm, HABE=property, goods, HABEN=to have, SIE=she, her, it, they, them, you, IHN=(not in the dictionary), NICHT=not, GESEHEN=(not in the dictionary). Therefore the sentence would read:—I white not where I to think stick composed property; to have she (blank) not (blank).

It would be rather difficult to gather the meaning of this!

On leaving the university, Dr. Zamenhof commenced his medical practice, and began to consider the publication of his language. He prepared the manuscript of his first brochure, "An International Language, by Dr. Esperanto, Preface and Full Manual," and sought out a publisher. For two years he sought in vain, the financial question meeting him at every turn; but, at length, after strenuous efforts, he succeeded in publishing the brochure himself, in 1887. He had "crossed the Rubicon," and Esperanto was given to the World!

Before concluding this preface let me give a word of advice to learners. Do not think, after a few days’ study, as many do, that you can improve the language. If you have such thoughts, put down on a piece of paper your youthful would-be improvements, and think no more of them till you have a really good knowledge of the language. Then read them over, and they will go at once into the waste-paper basket! or, perhaps, be preserved as curiosities! The most skilled Esperantists have had these thoughts, and have wasted valuable time in thinking them out, only to find at last that the more they studied Esperanto, the less they found it needed alteration. This is what Dr. Zamenhof himself says on the point:—"As the author of the language, I naturally, more than anyone else, would wish that it should be as perfect as possible; it is more difficult for me than others to hold back from fancied improvements, and I have at times been tempted to propose to Esperantists some slight alterations, but I bore in mind the great danger of this step and abandoned my intention." Copy the Doctor in this, and whatever you do, do not attempt to put your crude ideas of improvement into print.

In compiling this Commentary, my thanks are due to the following works I have consulted:—

• "Fundamenta Krestomatio," by Dr. Zamenhof.
• "Fundamento de Esperanto," by Dr. Zamenhof.
• "The Student’s Complete Text Book," by Mr. J. C. O’Connor, B.A.
• "Grammaire et Exercises," "Commentaire sur la Grammaire Esperanto," "Ekzercoj de Aplikado," "Texte Synthetique," all by M. L. de Beaufront.
• "Esperanta Sintakso," by M. Paul Fruictier.
• Various articles in "The Esperantist" and "The British Esperantist" gazettes.

As regards personal assistance, Mr. Bolingbroke Mudie very kindly looked over the MS. before its completion.

In preparing the manuscript for publication, my warmest thanks are due to Mr. E. A. Millidge, F.B.E.A., who took infinite pains in correcting errors of all kinds. And I must take occasion here to say that any points of grammar that may be found incorrect, or failure in making explanations clear to learners, are, in all probability, due to my not strictly following his suggestions.

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

In this Second Edition of the "Grammar and Commentary" the press and other errors which appeared in the first edition have been corrected, and the book has been revised throughout; the text also has been altered, where explanations were not quite clear.

In Part I an attempt has been made to give a nearer approach to the proper pronunciation of the vowels which differ in sound from those in English. In Part II the use of some of the pronouns, correlative words, and adverbs has been more fully explained, and fresh pages have been added to the verb section, showing, by numerous examples, the rendering of the common English verbs "can, could, may, might, shall, will, should, would, must, ought." In Part V, additions have been made in the list of useful words and expressions.

My thanks, for their kind assistance in the revision of the book, are especially due to Mr. E. A. Millidge, Mr. A. E. Wackrill, Mr. J. M. Warden (President of the Edinburgh Group), Mr. M. C. Butler, Mr. G. W. Bullen, Dr. R. Legge, Mr. W. Bailey, Mr. C. P. Blackham, Mr. P. J. Cameron, Mr. H. Clegg, Mr. W. Morrison, Mr. G. Ledger, and many other kind Esperantists, who have written to me pointing out errors and giving useful suggestions.

Even in this second edition I fear that some errors will be found, and I shall, therefore, be extremely obliged if Esperantists will kindly point out to me any they may meet with.

PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION

In this Third Edition of the "Grammar and Commentary" I have again to thank many kind Esperantist friends for assisting me in correcting errors, and for their advice in pointing out desirable alterations and improvements.

The book has been carefully revised, and a few additions have been made, which I trust will be found useful.

George Cox.