The Linguist’s Calendar: June 27

June 27

1915: Germany annexes the village of Moresnet in present-day Belgium, and thereby puts an end to the only state with Esperanto as its official language.






EXTRA for today, from Limits of Language:


The World’s Most Dangerous Language
 
Although many, and perhaps even most countries have exerted repression on minority languages, it is less common that entire languages have been declared illegal, as has been the case with Kurdish in Turkey. To be sure, children have been punished for speaking the wrong language in school (Basque in Franco’s Spain, Welsh in Britain, French in the USA, Aboriginal languages in Australia, Saami in Sweden, etc.), or laws have been adopted to reduce the public use of undesired languages (such as the Loi Toubon in France). Though extreme, the Turkish example is not unique.
There is another language, however, which has been banned as such, and in more countries than any other—Esperanto. There is no complete list of countries where Esperanto has been banned, but quite a few are mentioned in Ulrich Lins’ book La Dangera Lingvo (“the dangerous language”) including Nazi Germany, Sta­lin’s Soviet Union, China, Yugo­slavia, Austria, Japan, Bulgaria, Portugal, and Spain. As late as in 1990, an Iraqi Es­pe­ran­tist was let out of prison only on the con­di­tion that he never teach the language again.

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Note that Google has promoted the Endangered Languages Project on its front page.