ABSTRACT: Can Esperanto become an "international auxiliary language" as Latin and Greek were in the past, or Swahili or English are today? So far, no international auxiliary language has been created through the imposition of a political power, remarks Umberto Eco (*), "but faced to the risk that in a future European Union the language of a single nation could prevail" it could happen. And in a "world assembly"?

(1994 - IL QUOTIDIANO RADICALE, 11 November 1993)

The basis of the current diffusion of English is the colonial and economic expansion of Great Britain in the nineteenth century, and the supremacy of the American Way of Life in the twentieth. Other languages have become "vehicular": this has been true for Greek in classical ancient times, for Latin (thanks to the Catholic Church) and for Swahili (in the African continent).

Could Esperanto become the new vehicular language, i.e. the "international auxiliary language" (Ial), as the founder of the Italian semiological science, Umberto Eco, calls it? "So far the vehicular languages have imposed themselves owing to tradition or a series of factors which are difficult to analyse or for reasons of political hegemony", writes Eco in his latest book ("The quest for the perfect language, 1993); he then asks: "But would it be possible for a supranational body such as the U.N. or the European Parliament to impose an Ial as a free language?"

There are no historical precedents of a decision of this kind. But even though no language has ever been selected as a "vehicular" language through the imposition of an authority, things have changed radically especially in the field of communication. Eco himself writes: "That odd and constant exchange among different peoples, and not only at high social levels, which is represented by mass tourism, was an unknown phenomenon in the past centuries". Nor were there, in past centuries, the modern mass media capable of homologating vast different populations and of imposing their relatively homogeneous behaviours: "Precisely the mass media" - Eco writes - "have brought about the acceptance of English as the vehicular language". Therefore, he says, people could all the more so become familiar with an Ial (such as Esperanto) which could become the instrumental idiom for world-wide TV programs or for addresses by moral or religious authorities or by international institutions, but especially for electronic software

. Today we notice a weakening of customs barriers, and there is talk about supranational armies. On the other hand, linguistic pluralism at the level of the ethnic groups is no longer seen as a difference to be eliminated, but rather as an essential means of collective identity.

In this situation, the adoption of the language of a specific country or population would be perceived as an imposition. Explains the semiologist: "Faced to the risk that in a future European Union the language of a single nation could prevail, the States that have few chances of imposing their language or that fear the predominance of that of others could start supporting the adoption of an Ial".

Will an international Assembly ever make a decision of this importance, the adoption and diffusion of an auxiliary international language?

Translator's notes

(*) ECO UMBERTO. (Alessandria 1932). Semiologist and writer ("Il nome della rosa", "Il pendolo di Foucault", etc.).