Linguistics, Esperanto, Ballroom Dancing and Love

Sidney Spence Culbert (1913 - 2003) was a linguist, psychologist and Esperantist. Born in Miles City, Montana, Culbert moved to Tacoma, Washington with his family in 1923 and lived in Tacoma and Seattle for most of his life.

He extensively researched the number of speakers of various languages throughout the world (by stratified sampling), and contributed to the World Almanac's section on "Principal Languages of the World". An Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Washington (Seattle) for most of his academic career, in addition to his research into the speaking populations of languages he made significant contributions to the study of perception, contributions that were influential in the design of cockpit instrument panels in the Boeing 707 jet aircraft. Prior to receiving his doctorate and accepting a professorial position, Culbert had worked for a number of years as an engineer with the Boeing Company. During his tenure at the University of Washington he was actively involved in establishing the university's Linguistics Department, but chose to remain in the Psychology Department because his main linguistic focus, involving issues of perception, was in the field of psycholinguistics, which was then seen as more a matter of psychology than of language.

Psycholinguistics or psychology of language is the study of the psychological and neurobiological factors that enable humans to acquire, use, comprehend and produce language. Initial forays into psycholinguistics were largely philosophical ventures, due mainly to a lack of cohesive data on how the human brain functioned. Modern research makes use of biology, neuroscience, cognitive science, linguistics, and information theory to study how the brain processes language. There are a number of subdisciplines with non-invasive techniques for studying the neurological workings of the brain; for example, neurolinguistics has become a field in its own right.

Psycholinguistics covers the cognitive processes that make it possible to generate a grammatical and meaningful sentence out of vocabulary and grammatical structures, as well as the processes that make it possible to understand utterances, words, text, etc. Developmental psycholinguistics studies children's ability to learn language.

Born the son of a brick mason in Miles City, Mont., Culbert was an unusually bright child. After his family moved to Tacoma in 1923, as a teen he built a shortwave radio so he and his sister could listen to updates of the Charles Lindbergh solo flight across the Atlantic.

A standout student at Stadium High School who was disdainful of sports, he regularly organized the neighborhood children into performing Shakespeare plays. He staged 'Titus Andronicus' at 14.

After graduation from Stadium -- where he first became friends with Ruth -- he worked part time for the post office and on a tramp steamer. When he'd save enough money, Culbert would take a full-time semester of school at Puget Sound College. Out of cash, he'd go back to work. On one freighter trip to Brazil, he fell in love with the Portuguese language and soon became fluent. He transferred to the University of Washington and studied language and psychology, specializing in the study of perception. He skipped his master's degree and went straight into his doctoral work.

He completed his university education in 1950 and was offered a job at the school. During these years, his two loves blossomed: Esperanto and Ruth.

For the next 30 years he taught undergraduate and graduate courses in his areas of specialty - perception, psycholinguistics, and intercultural communications - at the University of Washington and he wrote the World Almanac page on "Principal Languages of the World.” after his retirement he continued to work with doctoral candidates for many years as a Professor Emeritus. Throughout his career, he and his wife, Ruth Moline Culbert, traveled widely in Europe, Asia and Africa, visiting universities and attending Esperanto conferences. In the mid-1950s, he used his knowledge of human perception and behavior to help design the original cockpit and instrument display of the Boeing 707.

A creation of Dr. L.L. Zamenhof, a Polish doctor, Esperanto first was promoted in 1887 as the world's second language that would allow everyone to communicate. Simple to learn with single sounds for all of the letters and basic sentence construction, it was hailed as smart, but it never caught on widely.

One place it did was in the Culbert household. The two always spoke it at home. When Ruth Moline decided she wanted Sidney Culbert's hand forever, she said the three magic words, the phrase that would make her man's heart flutter, then soar: "Instruu min Esperanto", "Teach me Esperanto." And with that, Sidney was hers.

The Culberts formed an unusual couple. They loved to dance (him an accomplished dancer) and they loved to travel. In public both always dressed stylishly; Sidney in his sport coat and white turtleneck, Ruth in something brightly colored and classy. They seldom skipped ballroom dancing every weekend danced in nightclubs on four continents.

But for it was in Esperanto he loved to linger. Culbert loved Esperanto's 16 specific, inviolable rules. For instance, every noun ends in "o," and every adjective ends in "a." Not only was he known worldwide for his study of the language -- international Esperanto message boards on the Internet lamented his death -- in his house, files were labeled in the language. Even his Honda had a custom license plate: SALUTON.

It means hello. It was how he and Ruth answered the phone every time. At home, they didn't speak English unless they had company.

To the Esperantists who hung on his every word -- even the ones they tripped over -- he was something more:

"fidela, sincera subtenanto de internacia komunikado kaj amikeco."

Translated into a language he preferred less, it means a

"faithful and sincere supporter of international communication and friendship."

How do you say "I love you" in Esperanto?

"Mi amas vin."