Chris Foran

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Why can't we all just get along? Or at least speak the same language?

That sentiment isn't new to 2016, when we can't agree on the weather or even the color of a dress.

In the late 19th century, Ludwig Lazarus Zamenhof set out to bridge the gaps of his time by creating a universal language, a language that would rise above national chauvinisms and religious differences.

His creation, Esperanto, never achieved any of that, of course. But as Esther Schor records in "Bridge of Words: Esperanto and the Dream of a Universal Language," Zamenhof's dream did foster a way of communicating that tried to make those connections, even as it reflected, for good and ill, the rapidly changing world it grew up in.

Schor, a professor of English at Princeton University, is herself a recent convert to Esperanto, and it is when she recounts her journeys to meet with fellow Esperantists in "Bridge of Words" that you get a clearer sense of the language's appeal and its believers' aspirations.

Those journeys bracket Schor's detailed history of Esperanto and its well-intentioned founder. Zamenhof, a Jewish doctor born in Poland, formally unveiled the language in 1887.

From the first, Schor writes, Esperanto's strengths were its weaknesses.

Initially, Zamenhof pitched the language as an efficiency measure, "an official and commercial dialect" that would cut through cultural and language barriers. But Zamenhof, a former Zionist who had given up on the idea of a Jewish state as an antidote to anti-Semitism, also saw Esperanto's potential as a universal language that could break down barriers.

Zamenhof died in 1917, with the world in the throes of an apocalyptic war and the idea of a language leading to a unified future still just an idea. Instead, Schor notes, in the century to follow, Esperanto would be "used by anarchists, socialists, pacifists, theosophists, Bahá'ís, feminists, Stalinists and even McCarthyites," with more than its share of schisms — and persecutions.

Schor's meticulous recounting of Esperanto's organizational history reads a lot like that of any hyper-focused, intellect-centered group: infighting, dueling agendas, clashing egos, all largely unnoticed by the outside world. The result is lots of inside baseball that can be hard to follow, although Schor includes a helpful glossary of Esperanto words and acronyms.

But it's in Schor's narratives about seeking out Esperanto organizations and attending conferences in locales from Cuba to Turkey that the deep-rooted faith in the language emerges.

Esperantists don't aspire to a world where everyone is speaking their language, she writes, just to a future where that kind of universality is something humanity decides to choose for itself.

" … To choose a language is to see the world a certain way; to question it a certain way; to assess, criticize, acclaim or reform it within certain parameters," Schor writes. "Esperantists choose the givenness that language gives the world."

In other words, it's a conscious choice to be on the same page. In 2016, that's starting to sound more and more appealing.