Though the exact definition is debatable, natural language is often contrasted with artificial or constructed languages such as Esperanto. The term “natural language” itself is not unproblematic, as all human languages are social conventions, not biological phenomena—what is biologically determined is only the child’s general capacity to learn one or several of these social languages.

 

The understanding of natural languages reveals much about not only how language works (in terms of syntax, semantics, phonetics, phonology, etc), but also about how the human mind and the human brain function. In linguistic terms, ‘natural language’ only applies to a language that has evolved naturally, and the study of natural language primarily involves native (first language) speakers.

 

Lyons distinguishes four different senses of the term “natural” in linguistics, but does not find any definition of it that would be sufficient to distinguish Esperanto from English. Yet for many linguists the term “natural” has a relatively well-established and well-defined meaning: a natural language is one that has native speakers. In sociolinguistics, native speakers constitute the basis of the speech community of every language; in psycholinguistics and Chomsky-inspired general linguistics, the proof of the naturalness of a language is that it is acquired as a first language in early childhood.

 

The theory of universal grammar proposes that all natural languages have certain underlying rules which constrain the structure of the specific grammar for any given language. Most constructed languages do not obey these constraints, and thus can be clearly distinguished.

 

While grammarians, writers of dictionaries, and language policy-makers all have a certain influence on the evolution of language, their ability to influence what people think they ‘ought’ to say is distinct from what people actually say. Natural language applies to the latter, and is thus a ‘descriptive’ rather than a ‘prescriptive’ term. Thus non-standard language varieties (such as African American Vernacular English) are as natural as standard language varieties (such as Standard American English).

 

In principle we can distinguish between a possible natural language that could be acquired as a first language, and an actual natural language that is actually spoken by native speakers. Although an infinite set of possible natural languages must exist, it is often assumed that we do not yet know all of the defining properties of this set. The main task of linguistics is to discover them. This would mean that L. L. Zamenhof, the creator of Esperanto, may have created a language, but it was not a readymade, natural language: if children now acquire Esperanto as a first language, they must, according to this line of thought, change it in some way or another, as happens in the nativisation and creolisation of pidgins and new sign languages.

Esperanto is the most commonly used artificial language. It was created by Polish physician Ludwig L. Zamenhoff and was first presented in 1887. The name of the language comes from the pseudonym (“Doktoro Esperanto”) used by the author in his first textbook.

Esperanto can be learned considerably quicker than a typical natural language. The grammar is extremely regular, yet not primitive. There is only one paradigm for nouns and one paradigm for verbs. There is a simple relation between written and spoken text. The word order is “free”, allowing topic-focus articulation.

 

About 70% of Esperanto vocabulary come from Romance languages, about 20% from Germanic languages and English and some part from Slavic languages. The word-building is very rich and highly regular.

Today Esperanto has at least three properties that make it similar to a natural language:

        1) the norm of Esperanto is partly non-codified.

    Esperanto cannot be learnt from textbooks, grammars and dictionaries alone, but only by participating in the speech community. The concept of speech community as applied to Esperanto is very widely discussed. The linguist Bernard Comrie (1996) even asserts that the norm of Esperanto depends more on its speech community than the norm of English does. However, this claim requires qualification, since the norm of English still depends mainly on its community of native speakers, whereas the vast majority of the speech community of Esperanto consists of non-native speakers.

 

        2) several grammatical and lexical changes

 

    These changes occurred during the nearly 120-year long history of Esperanto have not been due to official or unofficial language planning and codification, but have been initiated and spread by anonymous speakers, being codified only afterwards (or not at all).

 

    This spontaneous change of Esperanto has been studied by many linguists throughout the years.

 

        3) Esperanto has native or first-language speakers.

 

    All native speakers of Esperanto are at least bilingual, many of them even trilingual, and practically all of them use another language more often than Esperanto in their adult lives.

 

    Taken together, these three properties indicate that Esperanto is clearly approaching the status of a natural language, similarly to pidgins that are being creolised.

    Last week I was talking to a friend from USA about this webography, what it is about, what was Esperanto, its purpose and he asked me “But what about English – isn’t that the international language?”

 

    It is true that English is widely spoken throughout the world but it does have some disadvantages. English is not neutral. It is the official language in several countries, so it would not be right if everyone else in the world had to spend time and money learning English while people in New Zealand, Britain, the United States etc. wouldn’t have to make that effort. English is a difficult language and, of course, there is always the question of which English – British or American?

 

    In most countries multi-lingualism is normal. David Crystal estimated that two thirds of the world’s children grow up in bilingual environments and become competent in both languages as many countries multi-lingualism is normal.

 

    Many of the statistics we read about the supposed number of English speakers in the world are very inaccurate, and don’t specify what degree of competency they refer to. In 2000 when researchers tested 4500 Europeans for ‘perceived’ versus ‘actual’ English-language skills, the results were discouraging… the number of people really fit for English-language television turned out to be less than half the expected audience.

 

    In countries such as France, Spain and Italy less than three percent had excellent command of English; only in Scandinavia and the Low Countries did the numbers even exceed ten percent.

 

    Even if we talk about the Internet. Much is made of the Internet as an instrument for circulating English around the globe, but Internet traffic in other languages will soon exceed English-language traffic.

 

    Not everyone wants to use English. Dr Neville Alexander, political activist, who was imprisoned on Robben Island during ex-president Mandela’s time there, and director of the Project for the Study of Alternative Education in South Africa, has been a key player in the language debate. In Linux Journal, (‘Bridging the Digital Divide’, November 2002) he emphasises the need to move away from being a monolinguistic society:

 

“An English-only, or even an English-mainly, policy necessarily condemns most people, and thus the country as a whole, to a permanent state of mediocrity, since people are unable to be spontaneous, creative and self-confident if they cannot use their first language”.

 

    For this reason many people are working to make computers available to ordinary people in South Africa, India, and other countries, for use in their own languages.

    Esperanto is not the only, or even the 1st, artificial language. In the 1600s, Descartes created a language made up of numbers to represent words and ideas, and Sir Francis Bacon suggested a written system similar to Chinese ideographs.

 

    Other scholars came up with other schemes. Most, however, had little success. Their languages were rigidly logical, and very scholarly, while natural languages, used by everyone, tend to be illogical, flexible . . . and speakable. Between the time of Descartes and the present, 700 artificial languages have been created. They have included languages based on codes, on musical notes, on numbers.

 

    In one, for instance, “Honor thy father and thy mother” was written “leb2314 p2477 pf2477″ and was read “lebtoreonfo peetofosensen piftofosensen.”