Esperanto in a victorious CP world

Yesterday, I read this piece on wikipedia

After the Great War, there was a proposal for the League of Nations to accept Esperanto as their working language, following a report by Nitobe Inazō, an official delegate of League of Nations during the 13th World Congress of Esperanto in Prague. Ten delegates accepted the proposal with only one voice against, the French delegate, Gabriel Hanotaux. Hanotaux did not like how the French language was losing its position as the international language and saw Esperanto as a threat, effectively wielding his veto power to block the decision. However, two years later, the League recommended that its member states include Esperanto in their educational curricula. For this reason, many people see the 1920s as the heyday of the Esperanto movement. Anarchism as a political movement was very supportive during this time of anationalism as well as of the Esperanto language.

So my question is: if the CP had won, would the status of Esperanto be different, assuming that later on the world powers would come up with another intergovernmental organization instead of the League of Nations?
 
Would the status of Esperanto in a world where two German-speaking powers dominate Europe be different? No, not in the slightest.
Well all the Esperanto speakers persecuted, imprisoned and murdered (such as Zamenhof's children) by the Nazis would be around.
 
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Interesting. Esperanto as a common language was a moderately common trope in sci-fi up to the seventies (e.g. the works of Harrison and Chandler).

I included this in my EDC universe as part of a deliberate programme started by the nascent European Federation, after the Eastern War, to create common ground and maintain the ties generated during that conflict. This took off rather better than the governments expected with (by 1970) almost a third of EuroFed citizens being at least moderately fluent in Esperanto as a second (or third, or fourth...) language. Generally this is considered a Good Thing, further increasing cohesion. Also by 1970 almost all major films and many minor films have an Esperanto release.
It was less common in the Indian Federation and North America but was still popular. Brazil (EuroFed aligned of course) was considering giving it official language status.
In the east, in the states of the former Russian Imperium, the uptake was variable; Baltia embraced it (hardly surprising) and it was also popular in Ukrainia while it was uncommon in the rump of Russia. It was banned in Japan.

Of course this causes a number of conspiracy theories to develop around the Esperanto Institute, painting it as some sinister body directing events around the world from behind the scenes. This is especially true in Britain, where agents of the EI are occasional villains in British Republic propaganda material, including the television series Professor X where they were scheming to overthrow the British Way of Life with various Sinister Plans that had to be frustrated by the operatives of the RSF.
Of course Nightshade! handled it with more subtlety, just occasional displays of the five-pointed green star in the background of The Horror from the Blizzard for example.

All just nonsense of course, like aliens...
 
Would the status of Esperanto in a world where two German-speaking powers dominate Europe be different? No, not in the slightest.

Well, even Britain in OTL didn't seem to mind the official usage of Esperanto despite its vast empire and number of speakers. So I believe German might not be prestigious enough to challenge this.
 
Well, even Britain in OTL didn't seem to mind the official usage of Esperanto despite its vast empire and number of speakers. So I believe German might not be prestigious enough to challenge this.
I suspect some of that is down to the historical status of French as the language of diplomacy; France historically opposed the enshrining of Esperanto as an official LoN language (along with French, English and Spanish) through the efforts of Hanotaux while Britain (especially Gilbert Murray) was quite supportive of the idea. If Cecils's suggestion was accepted and the that teaching of Esperanto become the norm in schools it's entirely likely that in multilingual nations it's become a common choice; even in the UK it could be perceived as a more "neutral" option than French or German (totalitarian fascist governments aside).

With France and the UK (perhaps) sidelined or at least Germany and A-H or it's successor having a greater role in a LoN equivalent it's entirely imaginable that Esperanto would be a popular choice as a neutral language, without the historical, cultural and political baggage of a living language, or even a dead one such as Latin. Even today the UN only accepts six "official" languages (and German isn't one of them).
 
I suspect some of that is down to the historical status of French as the language of diplomacy; France historically opposed the enshrining of Esperanto as an official LoN language (along with French, English and Spanish) through the efforts of Hanotaux while Britain (especially Gilbert Murray) was quite supportive of the idea. If Cecils's suggestion was accepted and the that teaching of Esperanto become the norm in schools it's entirely likely that in multilingual nations it's become a common choice; even in the UK it could be perceived as a more "neutral" option than French or German (totalitarian fascist governments aside).

With France and the UK (perhaps) sidelined or at least Germany and A-H or it's successor having a greater role in a LoN equivalent it's entirely imaginable that Esperanto would be a popular choice as a neutral language, without the historical, cultural and political baggage of a living language, or even a dead one such as Latin. Even today the UN only accepts six "official" languages (and German isn't one of them).

I think so as well, the main hindrance was France after all. If they had been beaten badly, they would have been in no position to oppose the spread of Esperanto.
 
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I think so as well, the main hindrance was France after all. If they had been beaten badly, they would have been in no position to oppose the spread of Esperanto.
Or even if the war ended without a definite victory for either side; the existence of a powerful CP block would be a potent counterweight to France or a Franco/UK block, especially if (as in the EDC) there was an atmosphere of increased international cooperation in the post-WW1 period. ("Let's not do that again").

There are a couple of other (historically based) possibilities;
1. A "neutral" language for a newly created state (somewhat in the manner of Neutral Moresnet, which nearly adopted Esperanto as it's official language). Perhaps Esperanto could become the principal language of a successor state to Austria-Hungary? One that's free of the historical baggage of the other languages and is relatively easy to learn.
[Now as I think about this I may retcon this into EDC v2.0]
2. A somewhat different revolution in Russia might lead to a state that embraced Esperanto. Historically the new state was moderately supportive and (perhaps) a more technocratic SU might see Esperanto as a useful adjunct to the mass of languages in the country. This would probably need the elimination of Stalin.
3. A slightly more oddball possibility is Esperanto becoming a symbol for international socialism, somewhat like Zamenhof's original intention, but explicitly associated with a political movement. (I see some parallels with the embracing of Gaelic by the Irish Nationalist movement).
This could happen in the pre-WW1 period ("The International Socialist Brotherhood must communicate easily") or later, possibly as a reaction to the suppression of Esperanto by fascist regimes (as historically happened in Germany, Spain and Portugal). Maybe the Comintern support this.
 

Vuru

Banned
Early communists would support Esperanto but the later ones absolutely not

Eastern Europe has had the idea of nation for much longer than the west, since the start basically, the people would sperg out if anyone tries to make them learn some language they don't like
 
Or even if the war ended without a definite victory for either side; the existence of a powerful CP block would be a potent counterweight to France or a Franco/UK block, especially if (as in the EDC) there was an atmosphere of increased international cooperation in the post-WW1 period. ("Let's not do that again").

I'm pretty new here so I don't know about your EDC TL yet, may you give me the link for further reading?

1. A "neutral" language for a newly created state (somewhat in the manner of Neutral Moresnet, which nearly adopted Esperanto as it's official language). Perhaps Esperanto could become the principal language of a successor state to Austria-Hungary? One that's free of the historical baggage of the other languages and is relatively easy to learn.
[Now as I think about this I may retcon this into EDC v2.0]

Now imagine Tolkien's Elvish became the official language for that new state haha.
 
I'm pretty new here so I don't know about your EDC TL yet, may you give me the link for further reading?
Few people are, it was never posted here. :)

If you're interested in it, and it's not a timeline per se but rather a rewrite of Doctor Who episodes an continuity using the premise of the Doctor as an evil would-be universal conqueror, it was posted over at Doctor Who AITAS RPG forum (where a comment on creating a scenario with standard, evil and female versions of the Doctors started it). No need to join to view.
It's currently on (very) extended hiatus and is being slowly rewritten as I incorporate new ideas.

Here's the introduction and here are a couple of bits I posted in the Mirror, Mirror thread here.

Now imagine Tolkien's Elvish became the official language for that new state haha.
Oh dear Jeebus that'd complicate matters. Maybe one of the smaller Fenspace factions might embrace it.
In fact I could see the Convention itself adopting Esperanto...
 
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