Esperanto and Its Rivals: The Struggle for an International Language

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In 1928, the young Eric Blair, later known as George Orwell, moved to Paris to begin his career as a writer and to improve his French. He first set up quarters at the home of his bohemian aunt Nellie Limouzin and her lover, Eugene Adam. Better known in revolutionary circles as Lanti, the man who is against everything, Adam was a radical Esperantist. He was the founder of Sennacieca Asocio Tutmonda, an international—or, more accurately, a non-national—working-class organization that combined class struggle with the advancement of Esperanto as the language of the coming proletar- ian revolution. Adam refused to speak French at home. Since Esperanto was the home language, Orwell soon had to find different lodgings in order to refine his French.1

This was not Orwell's last exposure to Esperanto. During the Spanish Civil War, when he volunteered to fight against General Franco's pro-fascist forces, Esperanto was widely used in newspapers and on radio stations and even by the Catalan government to inform International Brigades about the war.2 Nor was Esperanto Orwell's last encounter with international language projects. From 1942 to 1944, while working for the Eastern Service of the BBC, Or- well broadcast news commentaries in Basic English, an artificial language fashioned by the linguist and philosopher C. K. Odgen.

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