Esperanto Profanity - Sources

Sources

As a planned language designed for international communication, neither interjections to be used in anger, nor expletives, nor familiar expressions for sex acts and bodily functions were priorities for Dr. Zamenhof, and as such this sort of vocabulary does not loom large in either the Unua Libro nor in the Fundamento de Esperanto. According to Alos and Velkov, "(n)either Zamenhof nor the other pioneers of the international language used obscene words in their works; nevertheless, they all tried to make Esperanto a real language."

Alos and Velkov's remarks suggest a belief that a language without expletives or familiar expressions for sex acts and bodily functions is incomplete. Such a language would fail to respond to all of the situations that humans use language for. In furtherance of making Esperanto more "real" in this sense, Esperantists have created or invented the vocabulary thought to be missing. A number of important Esperantists have worked to further this effort.

In 1931, the poet Kálmán Kalocsay published Sekretaj sonetoj ("Secret Sonnets"), a poem cycle on erotic themes, that helped circulate some of the unofficial root words that form part of the basis of familiar sexual expressions in Esperanto. In 1981, Hektor Alos and Kiril Velkov published a small pamphlet on Tabuaj vortoj en Esperanto: vortaro, kun ekzemploj pri praktika uzado ("Taboo words in Esperanto: a dictionary with examples for practical use") that also discussed Esperanto sexual expressions and oaths; their pamphlet was distributed by the major Esperanto language book services. In 1987, Renato Corsetti, who later became president of the World Esperanto Association, published Knedu min, Sinjorino: tabuaj kaj insultaj esprimoj en Esperanto ("Knead me, madam! taboo and insulting expressions in Esperanto"), that also discussed this aspect of Esperanto vocabulary, and increased its coverage of interjections and expletives. The title of Corsetti's book is an allusion to the novel, Kredu Min, Sinjorino! ("Believe Me, Madam"), a well-received original novel in Esperanto by Cezaro Rossetti.

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