Esperanto at USC

As opposed to teaching
the old Esperanto?

In the early twentieth century, several American universities—formally or informally— started Esperanto classes. At Harvard, these were promoted by visiting celebrity professor Wilhelm Ostwald, but in many places, language professors became interested in the new language and after learning it started teaching it. Sadly (from the point of view of the Esperanto movement) the rising tide of Esperanto classes soon receded, and if I had to make a guess at the number of colleges and universities in the United States where you could study Esperanto in a classroom, I’d put the number at one.[1]

There is a good reason for schools to teach Esperanto: it’s a good starter language. One of the justifications for studying a foreign language is that it will help you understand language better. It will even help you in your native language. Esperanto, since it’s stripped of all the irregularities of natural language, helps you get to the concepts faster, since you’re not dealing with the intricacies of seven strong verb forms, or multiple ways to make a plural, or things like that. If you want to learn French, you might actually be better off with a year of Esperanto (assuming you know no other language but your own), and then jumping into French after that.

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“Speak Now” — Well Spoken

Read now!

I’d like to start with belated congratulations to Professor Kenji Yoshino for his marriage (truly belated; he married in 2009). The day Speak Now arrived at my door, my husband and I were watching Professor Yoshino on the The Rachel Maddow Show, where he was discussing the (then) upcoming Supreme Court hearing on same-sex marriage with Steve Kornacki (who was subbing). I made a comment about two gay men watching two gay men talk about same-sex marriage.

“Is Yoshino gay?” I noted that he was. “Is he married?” That I didn’t know, although I opened my copy of Speak Now and read as far as the dedication to Ron Stoneham. Perhaps? I didn’t need to read further than page 1 to find out the answer. Yoshino and Stoneham married in 2009. They have two children. In of themselves, they embody the sort of people that lawyers for marriage equality might want to have as plaintiffs, a point that he brings up in his book.

Speak Now has the longer title of Speak Now; Marriage Equality on Trial; The Story of Hollingsworth v. Perry (shades of the eighteenth-century long title, because that is a long title), but in addition to being the story of Hollingsworth v. Perry, it contains a lot of biographical information about Kenji Yoshino, bringing to mind the old adage, “the personal is political.” That Yoshino made Speak Now personal, even though he was not personally involved in the Perry trial in any way is something that gives the book much of its power.

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Unitarian Minister Enquires about Esperanto

Did the minister speak Esperanto?

The Independent was a progressive magazine, much like the more famous Harper’s Weekly (which it eventually merged with). It was initially published in New York, but later moved to Boston. Early on, it seemed quite supportive of Esperanto, including publishing an article by Dr. Zamenhof in 1904 and an article about Esperanto in 1906. These were both cited in response to a letter in their issue of March 21, 1907, which was appended to a list of seventeen recommended books on or in Esperanto for those interested in the langauge.

Sadly, the Independent did not continue in its support of Esperanto. During the Ido schism, it came solidly down on the side of Ido and for the worst possible reason.[1] Even then, in 1912, they described their interest as “scant.” Still, their scant interest had been enough to publish a few pages on the subject.

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Pasadena Professor Eminent in Esperanto

Can Throop spell "instructor"?

The January 3, 1908 Los Angeles Herald made note of an appointment at the Throop Institute, an educational institution founded seventeen years before and far better known by the name that it would adopt twelve years later. The article made a particular note that the new professor of modern languages was an expert on Esperanto, an association that would be repeated over the years, despite that Professor Du Poncet seems to have made little mark, in or out of the Esperanto movement.

Du Poncet wouldn’t be at the Throop Institute for long. According to news reports he left there for the University of Redlands after one year, and then was off to teaching high school students in Utah a year after that. The Herald gets his name slightly wrong, spelling it “Du Ponset,” which made searching tricky.

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The Bookseller, the Library, and Volapük

The late news from Paris

Among the many volumes in the Bancroft Library, the special collections library of the University of California, Berkeley, are two books on Volapük, the Hand-Book of Volapük, by Charles E. Sprague, and the Abridged Grammar of Volapük; Adapted to the Use of English Speaking People, by Auguste Kerckhoffs, and the only question I have is: “did they end up in the library because of Bancroft’s younger brother?” The Bancroft Library is named Hubert Howe Bancroft, a California bookseller and amateur historian who amassed a substantial library which he later sold to the State of California.[1]

Why not the older Bancroft? Well, they might have been his, but he doesn’t seem to have thought much of Volapük. In an essay on “Early California Literature,” he noted that while “a universal tongue must in time prevail,” he felt that English “need fear no competition from such artificial substitutes as Volapuk, of uncouth aspect.” No Volapükian he. But his brother is another matter altogether.

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Poetess’s Legacy to Universal Language

Eliza Pittsinger. California poet.
Could have benefited
universal language

It is safe to say that Eliza A. Pittsinger, a poet who died in San Francisco in 1908, is among the forgotten poets of California, but at the beginning of the twentieth century, she seems to have been something of a celebrated poet. She was born in about 1820 in West Hampton, Massachusetts,[1] to John and Mary Pittsinger. In 1842, she married one Professor Mayo[2] in Hartford, Connecticut. They separated and later divorced, with Eliza went back to using the name Pittsinger (if she ever used Mayo).

As early as 1862, Pittsinger had moved to San Francisco, where she described her profession as “poetess.” She had certainly established herself as a poet by this time, contributing a poem to the ceremonies for laying the corner stone of the New Pioneer Hall of the Society of California Pioneers, in July 1862. According to the Society of California Pioneers, this building was destroyed in the San Francisco earthquake of 1906. Miss Pittsinger, was not a California Pioneer, as the term is reserved for those who settled in California before 1850, at which time she was still in Northampton, although the San Francisco Call described her as such in an death notice of her sister, in May 1907. At the time of Pittsinger’s death, the Call stated that she arrived in California in 1852.

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