The Akademio: how Esperanto grows without splitting

Why untouchable: the Ido split

Two years later the question stopped being theoretical. In October 1907 the Delegation for the Adoption of an International Auxiliary Language met as a committee in Paris, with Louis Couturat and Léopold Leau as its secretaries. Esperanto's representative was Louis de Beaufront.

The committee chose a reformed Esperanto, submitted anonymously as Ido, which Couturat later acknowledged to be de Beaufront's own work. The usual estimate is that about a fifth of Esperanto's leading promoters went over to Ido, but only three or four per cent of ordinary Esperantists.

Ido kept reforming itself. Esperanto had nothing to negotiate: the text was already untouchable, so a reform proposal had nowhere to attach. That is the usual reading of why the rule exists, and why it is better seen as a guard against splits than as a straitjacket.

The Akademio de Esperanto

The "authoritative institution" of the preface became the Akademio. Boulogne set up a Lingva Komitato, a language committee, in 1905; the name Akademio first belonged to a smaller body inside it. In 1948 the two merged into today's Akademio de Esperanto.

• La Akademio havas kvardek kvin membrojn. - The Akademio has forty-five members.

• La Akademio ne povas ŝanĝi la Fundamenton. - The Akademio cannot change the Fundamento.

Official words: the Oficialaj Aldonoj

New official words arrive through the Oficialaj Aldonoj, the Official Additions. There have been ten. The eighth came in 1974 and the ninth in 2007. The tenth, approved on 24 September 2023 (41 of the 45 members voted, 32 in favour), added 420 roots and 832 words and terms, mostly names: countries, cities, seas, rivers, mountains, peoples and languages.

Most words are not official, and that is normal. Official means listed in the Universala Vortaro or an Aldono. Everything built from existing roots by the rules needs nobody's approval:

• Mi trovis ĝin en la retejo. - I found it on the website.