Esperanto as lingua franca for minority languages

A good blog post at the European Studies blog of the British Library, discussing the use of Esperanto as a language of translation for minority languages, like Provencal, in the case of this blog post.

Esperanto is one of my languages. I'm not too bad at it, as far as reading goes. C1 is along the lines of 3 on the DLPT. I took the KER exam in Moscow back in 2017. The skriba ekzameno covers the modalities of reading and writing. The Moscow Esperanto club didn't offer the parola; in order to do that, the club must agree to pay the travel and lodging of two Esperanto speakers/testers. No matter. I probably wouldn't have taken the C1 parola exam. B2 would have been more at my speaking/listening level in 2017.

I love the language. So many opportunities to read stories in languages I'd never learn or have the time to learn. That is one of the best parts of Esperanto.

The European Studies blog, which I stumbled upon years ago but just went back to today, writes about translations from Provencal, Mireio by Federic Mistral, specifically. Paul Champion and Eugene Noel translated it in 1909 into Esperanto.

The important part of all this is that Esperanto is being used to translate endangered languages, like Provencal. Provencal is endangered, among many other languages in the world. And authors are translating the works of these languages into Esperanto. Sure, not many people speak Esperanto, but perhaps more understand Esperanto than know Provencal, Occitan, Basque and Sorbian.

My point is, Esperanto is a handy language into which to translate these rare works so that more people can read and learn about these peoples, these endangered languages. Before they are lost.