Singular to plural

Abstract

In 1952, the Universal Esperanto Association (UEA) founded its Centre for Research and Documentation (CED) to develop and publish scientific documentation on the so-called “world language problem”. In 1969, CED launched a scholarly journal, La Monda Lingvo-Problemo (LMLP) , to stimulate multilingual scholarly debate on the language situation of the post-war world. In those same years, in the West and elsewhere, new political ideas and movements were arising, in all social spheres, aiming at freedom, justice, and equal rights. In this same spirit, the Esperantic Studies Foundation (

) was founded to support, financially and morally, similar studies. In 1974, governance of UEA moved to a new generation of postwar leaders, resulting in a renewal of ideas and debate on linguistic justice. It became clear that there was no single world language problem with a single solution, but that the field of linguistic justice, language rights and interlinguistic communication was much broader and multifaceted. Under the influence of new developments in social and political linguistics, the journal was retitled Language Problems and Language Planning (LPLP) and CED redefined its field of study from world language problem to world language problems. In 2026, LPLP reached its fiftieth annual volume.