Editorial-Clinical Esperanto

Editorial






Clinical Esperanto


Gerry Leisman
Editor-in-Chief FNRE
The National Institute for Brain and Rehabilitation Sciences, Nazareth, Israel
ORT-Braude College of Engineering, Karmiel, Israel
Institute for Clinical Ergonomics, Rehabilitation, and Applied Neuroscience-USA
Universidad de Ciencias Médicas de la Habana, Facultad Manuel Fajardo


Esperanto is a constructed international auxiliary language and is the pseudonym under which L. L. Zamenhof published his first book on the subject [1]. Esperanto was created in the late 1870s and early 1880s by Ludwig Lazarus Zamenhof, an ophthalmologist from Bialystok now Poland and then part of the Russian Empire. Zamenhof created the language to foster harmony between people from different countries. He had written:
"The place where I was born and spent my childhood gave direction to all my future struggles. In Białystok the inhabitants were divided into four distinct elements: Russians, Poles, Germans and Jews; each of these spoke their own language and looked on all the others as enemies. In such a town a sensitive nature feels more acutely than elsewhere the misery caused by language division and sees at every step that the diversity of languages is the first, or at least the most influential, basis for the separation of the human family into groups of enemies. I was brought up as an idealist; I was taught that all people were brothers, while outside in the street at every step I felt that there were no people, only Russians, Poles, Germans, Jews and so on. This was always a great torment to my infant mind, although many people may smile at such an 'anguish for the world' in a child. Since at that time I thought that 'grown-ups' were omnipotent, so I often said to myself that when I grew up I would certainly destroy this evil."
—L. L. Zamenhof, in a letter to Nikolai Borovko, ca. 1895 [2]

Zamenhof was not the only one to notice that language provides a divide between peoples. Oscar Wilde [3], in his inimitable way, commented that Americans and British were, "two peoples separated by a common language."
If I gave a lecture requiring the use of neuroanatomical concepts in the USA, UK, Canada or any other English speaking country, I could easily refer to temporal lobes, amygdala, and so on and be understood. I could do the same in France, independent of a lingua franca of English and refer to the Latin roots of lobe temporale or amygdala and still be understood. When I returned to Israel in the 1990s and lectured in Hebrew, suddenly the temporal lobe became "unah tzid-eet" ״אונה רקתית צדעית״ and the amygdala became "shaked ha'moach" ״שקד המוח״ or the almond of the brain. This is egregious and just plain dumb. Graduate students revert to English or Latin roots in any event.
You might ask why any of this is important? The answer quite simply is that some time ago I went to my primary care doc suffering from a really bad episode of kidney stones (I could have said renal calculi) and was informed that I was actually suffering from idiopathic nephrolithiasis. The nephrolithiasis are the kidney stones and the idiopathic translates as, "I don't know why." So if you need to charge $250 for an office visit and all you can come up with is an "I don't know," the clientele you think will be less likely to come back to see you again and go to a specialist who uses words longer and less understandable than you.
When you get a contract and you do not understand a single word because the "small print" is written in legalese, one has to consult an attorney or else you might be in danger. When I use terms like homoscedasticity, canonical correlation, or Poisson equations you will defer to my expertise as a researcher because you are not and I create the distance for safety of being asked challenging questions that I might feel uncomfortable answering, or whose answers I might not be sure about myself.
Understand this, that understanding is 100 percent the responsibility of the sender. If it sounds like it does not make sense, it does not make sense. Language is the vehicle of communication between people and not a means of creating distance. Tell it like it is. Use clear language. Ask if you patients, students, partners, or children understand and if not – it is you.

References
Zamnehoff, L.L. Dr. Esperanto's International Language: Introduction &
Complete Grammar. English Edition translated by RH Geoghegan, Balliol College, Oxford, 1889. (New printing, edited and preface by Gene Keyes, 2000 Halifax, Nova Scotia: Verkista HTML version with updated preface 2006 Berwick, Nova Scotia (http://www.genekeyes.com, downloaded 1 July 2014)).
Matthias U. Esperanto - The New Latin for the Church and for Ecumenism (Translated by Leon, M.,Mullarney, M. Flandra Esperanto-Ligo: Antwerp, Belgium, 2002, ISBN 90-77066-04-7.
Wilde, O. The Canterville ghost. SL Rattiner Ed. The Canterville ghost and other stories. Roslyn, NY, 2001.



Funct Neurol Rehabil Ergon 2014;4(2-3):pp. ISSN: 2156-941X
© 2014 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.
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Gerry Leisman




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Gerry Leisman