Come and study the Esperanto-speaking tribe

[renato corsetti]

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
Center for Research and Documentation
on World Language Problems
in cooperation with
Universal Esperanto Association



Berlin, Germany, 31 July-8 August 1999



COME AND STUDY THE ESPERANTO-SPEAKING TRIBE


Linguistics textbooks give all kinds of definitions of Esperanto. But the
fact is that members of the linguistic community don't know much about
people who speak the language. Can they use Esperanto in everyday
situations, quarrel in it, swear in it? Are there any native speakers?

 The Esperanto movement has a language problem of its own: it is difficult
for someone who has not studied the language to find out about the Esperanto
movement. And yet the Esperanto language, the Esperanto movement and
Esperanto speakers present a challenge to many branches of linguistics and
the social sciences. There are questions which demand to be answered: who
speaks Esperanto? and why? What happens if children learn the language as
one of their native tongues? What is the structure of a linguistic community
in which native speakers are only a tiny minority?

The Universal Esperanto Association (UEA) is the largest Esperanto
organisation in the world. Its annual congress attracts several thousand
participants every year. The programme includes cultural, political and
scientific sessions, but most importantly, the annual congress gives
Esperantists from around the world the chance to meet.

This year, UEA has decided to open its conference to scholars who want to
learn more about the unique linguistic and sociological structure of the
Esperanto movement. This programme is offered in cooperation with the Center
for Research and Documentation on World Language Problems, an independent
research institute whose activities include editing the journal  "Language
Problems and Language Planning". We are not aiming to convince linguists to
learn Esperanto; our aim is to show that Esperanto is an interesting object
of study in its own right.

The annual meeting of the worldwide Esperanto-speaking tribe, the 84th World
Congress of Esperanto, will take place from the 31st of July to the 8th of
August  in the International Congress Center in Berlin, Germany. You are
invited to attend this congress and observe it at leisure; the usual
congress fee will be waived for professional linguists, but please let us
know in advance if you are planning to attend.  You will be free to mingle
with the people, interview, record, videotape, or undertake other research
activities. We will try to provide interpreters where necessary. If you wish
you may also take a course in order to get an understanding of the basic
structure of the language.

The World Congress of Esperanto always includes a series of Esperanto
Studies sessions. If you want to give a talk on contact linguistics or
international/interethnic language problems, please let us know. You may
also be interested in the Nitobe symposium,  a two-day symposium, on 2nd-3rd
August, on  "Globalization and Language Diversity", with several well known
speakers, which will focus on language policy and international relations.
Again, if you would like to give an oral or written contribution, please
inform us. We will get back in touch with you.

For more information on Esperanto Studies and planned languages, we
recommend the following sites:

http://magi.com/~mfettes/studies.html
http://www.snafu.de/~ubecker/gesellsc.htm
http://htliu.yeah.net

You can also receive an overview of Esperanto Studies and Interlinguistics,
a bibliography on the subject and a brief description of the structure and
organisation of the World Congress.

For further information, and assistance with accomodation in Berlin, please
contact:


Center for Research and Documentation
on World Language Problems
Nieuwe Binnenweg, 176
NL-3015 BJ Rotterdam
The Netherlands
<uea at inter.nl.net>