Esperanto ( or ) is the world's most widely spoken constructed

international auxiliary language An international auxiliary language (sometimes acronymized as IAL or contracted as auxlang) is a language meant for communication between people from all different nations, who do not share a common first language. An auxiliary language is primaril ...

. Created by the Warsaw-based

ophthalmologist Ophthalmology ( ) is a surgery, surgical subspecialty within medicine that deals with the diagnosis and treatment of eye disorders. An ophthalmologist is a physician who undergoes subspecialty training in medical and surgical eye care. Followin ...

L. L. Zamenhof L. L. Zamenhof (15 December 185914 April 1917) was an ophthalmologist who lived for most of his life in Warsaw. He is best known as the creator of Esperanto, the most widely used constructed international auxiliary language. Zamenhof first dev ...

in 1887, it was intended to be a universal second language for international communication, or "the international language" (). Zamenhof first described the language in ''

Dr. Esperanto's International Language ''Dr. Esperanto's International Language'' (russian: Международный язык), commonly referred to as ' (''First Book''), is an 1887 book by Polish ophthalmologist L. L. Zamenhof, in which he first introduced and described the con ...

'' (), which he published under the pseudonym . Early adopters of the language liked the name ''Esperanto'' and soon used it to describe his language. The word translates into English as "one who hopes". Within the range of constructed languages, Esperanto occupies a middle ground between "naturalistic" (imitating existing natural languages) and ''a'priori'' (where features are not based on existing languages). Esperanto's vocabulary,

syntax In linguistics, syntax () is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure ( constituency) ...

and semantics derive predominantly from languages of the Indo-European group. The vocabulary derives primarily from Romance languages, with substantial contributions from Germanic languages. Slavic languages also influenced the grammar and phonology. One of the language's most notable features is its extensive system of derivation, where prefixes and suffixes may be freely combined with roots to generate words, making it possible to communicate effectively with a smaller set of words. Esperanto is the most successful constructed international auxiliary language, and the only such language with a sizeable population of native speakers, of which there are perhaps several thousand. Usage estimates are difficult, but two estimates put the number of people who know how to speak Esperanto at around 100,000. Concentration of speakers is highest in Europe, East Asia, and South America. Although no country has adopted Esperanto officially, ("Esperanto-land") is used as a name for the collection of places where it is spoken. The language has also gained a noticeable presence on the internet in recent years, as it became increasingly accessible on platforms such as Duolingo, Wikipedia, Amikumu and Google Translate. Esperanto speakers are often called "Esperantists" ().

History

Creation

Esperanto was created in the late 1870s and early 1880s by

, a

Polish-Jewish The history of the Jews in Poland dates back at least 1,000 years. For centuries, Poland was home to the largest and most significant Ashkenazi Jewish community in the world. Poland was a principal center of Jewish culture, because of the lon ...

from

Białystok Białystok is the largest city in northeastern Poland and the capital of the Podlaskie Voivodeship. It is the tenth-largest city in Poland, second in terms of population density, and thirteenth in area. Białystok is located in the Białystok Up ...

, then part of the Russian Empire, but now part of Poland. In the 1870s, just a few years before Zamenhof created Esperanto, Polish was banned in public places in Białystok. According to Zamenhof, he created the language to reduce the "time and labor we spend in learning foreign tongues", and to foster harmony between people from different countries: "Were there but an international language, all translations would be made into it alone ... and all nations would be united in a common brotherhood."L.L.Zamenhof
International Language
. Warsaw. 1887 His feelings and the situation in Białystok may be gleaned from an extract from his letter to Nikolai Borovko: Zamenhof's goal was to create an easy and flexible language that would serve as a universal second language, to foster world peace and international understanding, and to build a "community of speakers". His original title for the language was simply "the international language" (), but early speakers grew fond of the name ''Esperanto,'' and began to use it as the name for the language just two years after its creation. The name quickly gained prominence, and has been used as an official name ever since. In 1905, Zamenhof published the '' Fundamento de Esperanto'' as a definitive guide to the language. Later that year, French Esperantists organized with his participation the first World Esperanto Congress, an ongoing annual conference, in Boulogne-sur-Mer, France. Zamenhof also proposed to the first congress that an independent body of linguistic scholars should steward the future evolution of Esperanto, foreshadowing the founding of the Akademio de Esperanto (in part modeled after the

Académie Française An academy (Attic Greek: Ἀκαδήμεια; Koine Greek Ἀκαδημία) is an institution of secondary education, secondary or tertiary education, tertiary higher education, higher learning (and generally also research or honorary membershi ...

), which was established soon thereafter. Since then, world congresses have been held in different countries every year, except during the two World Wars, and the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic (when it was moved to an online-only event). Since the Second World War, they have been attended by an average of more than 2,000 people, and up to 6,000 people at the most. Zamenhof wrote that he wanted mankind to "learn and use ... en masse ... the proposed language as a living one". The goal for Esperanto to become a global auxiliary language was not Zamenhof's only goal; he also wanted to "enable the learner to make direct use of his knowledge with persons of any nationality, whether the language be universally accepted or not; in other words, the language is to be directly a means of international communication." After some ten years of development, which Zamenhof spent translating literature into Esperanto, as well as writing original prose and verse, the first book of Esperanto grammar was published in Warsaw on July 26, 1887. The number of speakers grew rapidly over the next few decades; at first, primarily in the Russian Empire and Central Europe, then in other parts of Europe, the Americas, China, and Japan. In the early years before the world congresses, speakers of Esperanto kept in contact primarily through correspondence and periodicals. Zamenhof's name for the language was simply ("International Language"). December 15, Zamenhof's birthday, is now regarded as

20th century

The autonomous territory of Neutral Moresnet, between what is today Belgium and Germany, had a sizable proportion of Esperanto-speakers among its small and multi-ethnic population. There was a proposal to make Esperanto its official language. However, neither Belgium nor Germany had ever surrendered its original claim to it. Around 1900, Germany, in particular, was taking a more aggressive stance towards the territory and was accused of sabotage and of obstructing the administrative process to force the issue. It was the First World War, however, that was the catalyst that brought about the end of neutrality. On August 4, 1914, Germany invaded Belgium, leaving Moresnet at first "an oasis in a desert of destruction". In 1915, the territory was annexed by the Kingdom of Prussia, without international recognition. Germany lost the war, Moresnet was returned to Belgium, and today it is the German-speaking Belgian municipality of Kelmis. After the Great War, a great opportunity seemed to arise for Esperanto when the Iranian delegation to the League of Nations proposed that it be adopted for use in international relations, following a report by Nitobe Inazō, a Japanese official delegate of the League of Nations during the 13th World Congress of Esperanto in Prague. Ten delegates accepted the proposal with only one voice against, the French delegate,

Gabriel Hanotaux Albert Auguste Gabriel Hanotaux, known as Gabriel Hanotaux (19 November 1853 – 11 April 1944) was a French statesman and historian. Biography He was born at Beaurevoir in the ''département'' of Aisne. He studied history at the École des C ...

. Hanotaux opposed all recognition of Esperanto at the League, from the first resolution on December 18, 1920, and subsequently through all efforts during the next three years. Hanotaux did not approve of how the French language was losing its position as the international language and saw Esperanto as a threat, effectively wielding his veto power to block the decision. However, two years later, the League recommended that its member states include Esperanto in their educational curricula. The French government retaliated by banning all instruction in Esperanto in France's schools and universities. The French Ministry of Public Instruction said that "French and English would perish and the literary standard of the world would be debased". Nonetheless, many people see the 1920s as the heyday of the Esperanto movement. During this time,

Anarchism Anarchism is a political philosophy and movement that is skeptical of all justifications for authority and seeks to abolish the institutions it claims maintain unnecessary coercion and hierarchy, typically including, though not necessa ...

as a political movement was very supportive of both anationalism and the Esperanto language.

Fran Novljan Franjo (Fran) Novljan (7 August 1879 – 12 January 1977) was a Croatian educator, andragogue, and Esperantist.Kingdom of Yugoslavia. He was among the founders of the Croatian (Educational Alliance), of which he was the first secretary, and organized Esperanto institutions in Zagreb. Novljan collaborated with Esperanto newspapers and magazines, and was the author of the Esperanto textbook ''Internacia lingvo esperanto i Esperanto en tridek lecionoj''.Istarska enciklopedija
Josip Šiklić: ''Novljan, Fran'' (pristupljeno 23. ožujka 2020.) In 1920s Korea, socialist thinkers pushed for the use of Esperanto through a series of columns in The Dong-a Ilbo as resistance to both Japanese occupation as well as a counter to the growing nationalist movement for Korean language standardization. This lasted until the

Mukden Incident The Mukden Incident, or Manchurian Incident, known in Chinese as the 9.18 Incident (九・一八), was a false flag event staged by Japanese military personnel as a pretext for the 1931 Japanese invasion of Manchuria. On September 18, 1931, L ...

in 1931, when changing colonial policy led to an outright ban on Esperanto education in Korea.

Official repression

Esperanto attracted the suspicion of many states. Repression was especially pronounced in Nazi Germany, Francoist Spain up until the 1950s, and the Soviet Union under Stalin, from 1937 to 1956. In Nazi Germany, there was a motivation to ban Esperanto because Zamenhof was Jewish, and due to the internationalist nature of Esperanto, which was perceived as "Bolshevist". In his work, ''

Mein Kampf (; ''My Struggle'' or ''My Battle'') is a 1925 autobiographical manifesto by Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler. The work describes the process by which Hitler became antisemitic and outlines his political ideology and future plans for Germ ...

'', Adolf Hitler specifically mentioned Esperanto as an example of a language that could be used by an international Jewish conspiracy once they achieved world domination. Esperantists were killed during the Holocaust, with Zamenhof's family in particular singled out to be killed. The efforts of a minority of German Esperantists to expel their Jewish colleagues and overtly align themselves with the Reich were futile, and Esperanto was legally forbidden in 1935. Esperantists in German concentration camps did, however, teach Esperanto to fellow prisoners, telling guards they were teaching Italian, the language of one of Germany's

Axis allies The Axis powers, ; it, Potenze dell'Asse ; ja, 枢軸国 ''Sūjikukoku'', group=nb originally called the Rome–Berlin Axis, was a military coalition that initiated World War II and fought against the Allies. Its principal members were Na ...

. In Imperial Japan, the left wing of the Japanese Esperanto movement was forbidden, but its leaders were careful enough not to give the impression to the government that the Esperantists were socialist revolutionaries, which proved a successful strategy. After the October Revolution of 1917, Esperanto was given a measure of government support by the new workers' states in the former Russian Empire and later by the Soviet Union government, with the

Soviet Esperantist Union Esperanto was variously endorsed and oppressed in the Soviet Union throughout its history. The language was permitted by the government in the 1920s, but its internationalist nature brought it under scrutiny in the 1930s and Joseph Stalin enforce ...

being established as an organization that, temporarily, was officially recognized. In his biography on Joseph Stalin, Leon Trotsky mentions that Stalin had studied Esperanto. However, in 1937, at the height of the Great Purge, Stalin completely reversed the Soviet government's policies on Esperanto; many Esperanto speakers were executed, exiled or held in captivity in the Gulag labour camps. Quite often the accusation was: "You are an active member of an international spy organization which hides itself under the name of 'Association of Soviet Esperantists' on the territory of the Soviet Union." Until the end of the Stalin era, it was dangerous to use Esperanto in the Soviet Union, even though it was never officially forbidden to speak Esperanto.

Fascist Italy Fascism is a far-right, authoritarian, ultra-nationalist political ideology and movement,: "extreme militaristic nationalism, contempt for electoral democracy and political and cultural liberalism, a belief in natural social hierarchy and the ...

allowed the use of Esperanto, finding its phonology similar to that of Italian and publishing some tourist material in the language. During and after the Spanish Civil War, Francoist Spain suppressed anarchists, socialists and Catalan nationalists for many years, among whom the use of Esperanto was extensive, but in the 1950s the Esperanto movement was again tolerated.

Modern history

In 1954, the United Nations — through UNESCO — granted official support to Esperanto as an

in the

Montevideo Resolution Resolution IV.4.422-4224, commonly referred to as the Montevideo Resolution, is a resolution passed in Montevideo, Uruguay on December 10, 1954 by the General Conference of UNESCO. The resolution officially supports the constructed language Esp ...

. However, Esperanto is still not one of the

official languages of the UN The Official Languages of the United Nations are the six languages that are used in UN meetings and in which all official UN documents are written. In the six languages, four are the official language or national language of permanent members in ...

. The development of Esperanto has continued unabated into the 21st century. The advent of the Internet has had a significant impact on the language, as learning it has become increasingly accessible on platforms such as Duolingo, and as speakers have increasingly networked on platforms such as Amikumu. With up to two million speakers, it is the most widely spoken constructed language in the world. Although no country has adopted Esperanto officially, '' Esperantujo'' ("Esperanto-land") is the name given to the collection of places where it is spoken. While many of its advocates continue to hope for the day that Esperanto becomes officially recognized as the

, some (including raŭmistoj) have stopped focusing on this goal and instead view the Esperanto community as a stateless

diasporic A diaspora ( ) is a population that is scattered across regions which are separate from its geographic place of origin. Historically, the word was used first in reference to the dispersion of Greeks in the Hellenic world, and later Jews after ...

linguistic group based on freedom of association.

Official use

Esperanto has not been a secondary official language of any recognized country, but it entered the education systems of several countries, such as Hungary and China. There were plans at the beginning of the 20th century to establish Neutral Moresnet, in central-western Europe, as the world's first Esperanto state; any such plans came to an end when the Treaty of Versailles awarded the disputed territory to Belgium, effective January 10, 1920. In addition, the self-proclaimed artificial island micronation of Rose Island, near Italy in the Adriatic Sea, used Esperanto as its official language in 1968, and another micronation, the extant

Republic of Molossia The Republic of Molossia, also known as Molossia (), is a micronation claiming sovereignty over of land near Dayton, Nevada. The micronation has not received recognition from any of the member states of the United Nations. It was founded by K ...

, near Dayton, Nevada, uses Esperanto as an official language alongside English. The Chinese government has used Esperanto since 2001 for daily news on china.org.cn. China also uses Esperanto in China Radio International, and for the internet magazine ''El Popola Ĉinio''. The Vatican Radio has an Esperanto version of its website. The United States Army has published military phrase books in Esperanto, to be used from the 1950s until the 1970s in war games by mock enemy forces. A field reference manual, FM 30-101-1 Feb. 1962, contained the grammar, English-Esperanto-English dictionary, and common phrases. In the 1970s Esperanto was used as the basis for Defense Language Aptitude Tests. Esperanto is the working language of several non-profit international organizations such as the , a left-wing cultural association which had 724 members in over 85 countries in 2006. There is also Education@Internet, which has developed from an Esperanto organization; most others are specifically Esperanto organizations. The largest of these, the Universal Esperanto Association, has an official consultative relationship with the United Nations and UNESCO, which recognized Esperanto as a medium for international understanding in 1954. The Universal Esperanto Association collaborated in 2017 with UNESCO to deliver an Esperanto translation of its magazine '' UNESCO Courier'' (''Unesko Kuriero en Esperanto''). Esperanto was also the first language of teaching and administration of the International Academy of Sciences San Marino. The League of Nations made attempts to promote teaching Esperanto in member countries, but the resolutions were defeated mainly by French delegates, who did not feel there was a need for it. In the summer of 1924, the American Radio Relay League adopted Esperanto as its official international auxiliary language, and hoped that the language would be used by radio amateurs in international communications, but its actual use for radio communications was negligible. All the personal documents sold by the World Service Authority, including the World Passport, are written in Esperanto, together with English,

French French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents ** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...

, Spanish, Russian, Arabic, and Chinese (the official languages of the United Nations).

Internet

On May 28, 2015, the language learning platform Duolingo launched a free Esperanto course for English speakers. On March 25, 2016, when the first Duolingo Esperanto course completed its beta-testing phase, that course had 350,000 people registered to learn Esperanto through the medium of English. By July 2018, the number of learners had risen to 1.36 million. On July 20, 2018, Duolingo changed from recording users cumulatively to reporting only the number of "active learners" (i.e., those who are studying at the time and have not yet completed the course), which as of October 2022 stands at 299,000 learners.Language Courses for English Speakers
, October 23, 2021, Duolingo.com. Accessed October 23, 2021 On October 26, 2016, a second Duolingo Esperanto course, for which the language of instruction is Spanish, appeared on the same platform and which as of April 2021 has a further 176,000 students.Language Courses for Spanish Speakers
, 22 March 2021, Duolingo.com. Accessed 22 March 2021. A third Esperanto course, taught in Brazilian Portuguese, began its beta-testing phase on May 14, 2018, and as of April 2021, 220,000 people are using this courseLanguage Courses for Portuguese Speakers
, 22 March 2021, Duolingo.com. Accessed 22 March 2021. and 155,000 people in May 2022. A fourth Esperanto course, taught in French, began its beta-testing phase in July 2020,Esperanto for French Speakers
, Duolingo.com. Accessed September 15, 2020. and as of March 2021 has 72,500 studentsLanguage Courses for French Speakers
, 22 March 2021, Duolingo.com. Accessed March 22, 2021. and 101,000 students in May 2022. As of October 2018, , another online learning platform for Esperanto, has 320,000 registered users, and nearly 75,000 monthly visits. 50,000 users possess at least a basic understanding of Esperanto. On February 22, 2012, Google Translate added Esperanto as its 64th language. On July 25, 2016,

Yandex Translate Yandex Translate (russian: Яндекс Переводчик, r=Yandeks Perevodchik) is a web service provided by Yandex, intended for the translation of text or web pages into another language. The service uses a self-learning statistical ma ...

added Esperanto as a language.

With about articles, Esperanto Wikipedia (Vikipedio) is the 35th-largest Wikipedia, as measured by the number of articles, and is the largest Wikipedia in a constructed language. About 150,000 users consult the Vikipedio regularly, as attested by Wikipedia's automatically aggregated log-in data, which showed that in October 2019 the website has 117,366 unique individual visitors per month, plus 33,572 who view the site on a mobile device instead.'' Bonvenon al Vikipedia'' ("Welcome to Wikipedia"), main page of the Esperanto-language version of Wikipedia, October 4, 2019. Accessed October 4, 2019.

Linguistic properties

Classification

Esperanto's phonology, grammar, vocabulary, and semantics are based on the Indo-European languages spoken in Europe. The sound inventory is essentially Slavic, as is much of the semantics, whereas the vocabulary derives primarily from Romance languages, with a lesser contribution from Germanic languages, and minor contributions from Slavic languages and Greek. Pragmatics and other aspects of the language not specified by Zamenhof's original documents were influenced by the native languages of early authors, primarily Russian, Polish, German, and

. Some evidence has shown that Zamenhof studied German, English, Spanish, Lithuanian, Italian and French and knew 13 different languages, which had an influence on Esparanto's linguistic properties. Paul Wexler proposes that Esperanto is relexified

Yiddish Yiddish (, or , ''yidish'' or ''idish'', , ; , ''Yidish-Taytsh'', ) is a West Germanic language historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews. It originated during the 9th century in Central Europe, providing the nascent Ashkenazi community with a ver ...

, which he claims is in turn a relexified Slavic language, though this model is not accepted by mainstream academics.Bernard Spolsk
''The Languages of the Jews: A Sociolinguistic History,''
Cambridge University Press, 2014 pp.157,180ff. p.183 Esperanto has been described as "a language lexically predominantly

Romanic The Romance languages, sometimes referred to as Latin languages or Neo-Latin languages, are the various modern languages that evolved from Vulgar Latin. They are the only extant subgroup of the Italic languages in the Indo-European language fam ...

, morphologically intensively agglutinative, and to a certain degree isolating in character". Typologically, Esperanto has prepositions and a

pragmatic word order In linguistics, word order (also known as linear order) is the order of the syntactic constituents of a language. Word order typology studies it from a cross-linguistic perspective, and examines how different languages employ different orders. C ...

that by default is '' subject–verb–object'' (SVO). Adjectives can be freely placed before or after the nouns they modify, though placing them before the noun is more common. New words are formed through extensive

prefix A prefix is an affix which is placed before the Word stem, stem of a word. Adding it to the beginning of one word changes it into another word. For example, when the prefix ''un-'' is added to the word ''happy'', it creates the word ''unhappy'' ...

ing,

suffix In linguistics, a suffix is an affix which is placed after the stem of a word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns, adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs. Suffixes can carry ...

ing, and compounding.

Phonology

Esperanto typically has 22 to 24 consonants (depending on the phonemic analysis and individual speaker), five vowels, and two semivowels that combine with the vowels to form six

diphthong A diphthong ( ; , ), also known as a gliding vowel, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of the speech o ...

s. (The consonant and semivowel are both written ''j'', and the uncommon consonant is written with the digraph '' dz'', which is the only consonant that does not have its own letter.) Tone is not used to distinguish meanings of words. Stress is always on the second-to-last vowel in proper Esperanto words, unless a final vowel is elided, which occurs mostly in poetry. For example, ' "family" is , with the stress on the second ''i'', but when the word is used without the final '' (),'' the stress remains on the second : .

Consonants

The 23 consonants are: There is some degree of allophony: * The sound is usually an alveolar trill , but can also be a uvular trill , a

uvular fricative Uvulars are consonants place of articulation, articulated with the back of the tongue against or near the Palatine uvula, uvula, that is, further back in the mouth than velar consonants. Uvulars may be stop consonant, stops, fricative consonant, ...

, and an alveolar approximant . Many other forms such as an alveolar tap are done and accepted in practice. * The is normally pronounced like English ''v,'' but may be pronounced (between English ''v'' and ''w'') or , depending on the language background of the speaker. * A semivowel normally occurs only in

s after the vowels and , not as a consonant . * Common, if debated,

assimilation Assimilation may refer to: Culture *Cultural assimilation, the process whereby a minority group gradually adapts to the customs and attitudes of the prevailing culture and customs **Language shift, also known as language assimilation, the progre ...

includes the pronunciation of as and as . A large number of consonant clusters can occur, up to three in initial position (as in ', "strange") and five in medial position (as in '' ekssklavo'', "former slave"). Final clusters are uncommon except in unassimilated names, poetic elision of final '','' and a very few basic words such as ' "hundred" and ' "after".

Vowels

Esperanto has the five vowels found in such languages as Spanish, Modern Hebrew, and Modern Greek. Since there are only five vowels, a good deal of variation in pronunciation is tolerated. For instance, ''e'' commonly ranges from (French ) to (French ). These details often depend on the speaker's native language. A

glottal stop The glottal plosive or stop is a type of consonantal sound used in many spoken languages, produced by obstructing airflow in the vocal tract or, more precisely, the glottis. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents thi ...

may occur between adjacent vowels in some people's speech, especially when the two vowels are the same, as in ' "hero" ( or ) and ' "great-grandfather" ( or ).

Orthography

Alphabet

The Esperanto alphabet is based on the Latin script, using a one-sound-one-letter principle, with the exception of ͡z It includes six letters with

diacritic A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacriti ...

s: ĉ, ĝ, ĥ, ĵ, ŝ (with a

circumflex The circumflex () is a diacritic in the Latin and Greek scripts that is also used in the written forms of many languages and in various romanization and transcription schemes. It received its English name from la, circumflexus "bent around"a ...

), and ŭ (with a breve). The alphabet does not include the letters ''q, w, x,'' or ''y'', which are only used when writing unassimilated terms or proper names. The 28-letter alphabet is:

Pronunciation

All ''unaccented'' letters are pronounced approximately as their respective IPA symbols, with the exception of ''C'' – //. Esperanto ''J'' and ''C'' are used in a way familiar to speakers of German and many Slavic languages, but unfamiliar to most English speakers: ''J'' has a ''Y'' sound ~i̯ as in ''yellow'' and ''boy,'' and ''C'' has a "''TS''" sound ͡s as in ''hits'' or the ''zz'' in ''pizza''. In addition, Esperanto ''G'' is always hard, as in ''give'', and Esperanto vowels are pronounced as in Spanish. The accented letters are: *''Ĉ'' is pronounced like English ''ch'' in ''chatting'' *''Ĝ'' is pronounced like English ''g'' in ''gem'' *''Ĥ'' is pronounced like the ''ch'' in German or in the Scottish Gaelic, Scots and Scottish Standard English ''loch''. It is also found sometimes in Scouse as the 'k' in ''book'' and 'ck' in ''chicken''. *''Ĵ'' is pronounced like the ''s'' in English ''fusion'' or the ''J'' in French ''Jacques'' *''Ŝ'' is pronounced like English ''sh'' *''Ŭ'' is pronounced like English ''w'' and is primarily used after vowels (e.g. ''antaŭ'')

Typing diacritics

Even with the widespread adoption of Unicode, the letters with diacritics (found in the "Latin-Extended A" section of the Unicode Standard) can cause problems with printing and computing, because they are not found on most physical keyboards and are left out of certain fonts. There are two principal workarounds to this problem, which substitute digraphs for the accented letters. Zamenhof, the inventor of Esperanto, created an "h-convention", which replaces ''ĉ, ĝ, ĥ, ĵ, ŝ,'' and ''ŭ'' with ''ch, gh, hh, jh, sh,'' and ''u,'' respectively. If used in a database, a program in principle could not determine whether to render, for example, ''ch'' as ''c'' followed by ''h'' or as ''ĉ'', and would fail to render, for example, the word properly, unless its component parts were intentionally separated, as in e.g. ''senc·hava''. A more recent "

x-convention There are two conventional sets ASCII substitutions for the letters in the Esperanto alphabet that have diacritics, as well as a number of graphic work-arounds. The diacritics of Esperanto were designed with a French manual typewriter in mind, as ...

" has gained ground since the advent of computing. This system replaces each diacritic with an ''x'' (not part of the Esperanto alphabet) after the letter, producing the six digraphs ''cx, gx, hx, jx, sx,'' and ''ux''. There are computer keyboard layouts that support the Esperanto alphabet, and some systems use software that automatically replaces x- or h-convention digraphs with the corresponding diacritic letters (for example, for

Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

, Mac OS X, and Linux, for Windows Phone, and Gboard and AnySoftKeyboard for

Android Android may refer to: Science and technology * Android (robot), a humanoid robot or synthetic organism designed to imitate a human * Android (operating system), Google's mobile operating system ** Bugdroid, a Google mascot sometimes referred to ...

). On Linux, the

GNOME A gnome is a mythological creature and diminutive spirit in Renaissance magic and alchemy, first introduced by Paracelsus in the 16th century and later adopted by more recent authors including those of modern fantasy literature. Its characte ...

Cinnamon Cinnamon is a spice obtained from the inner bark of several tree species from the genus ''Cinnamomum''. Cinnamon is used mainly as an aromatic condiment and flavouring additive in a wide variety of cuisines, sweet and savoury dishes, breakfa ...

, and KDE desktop environments support the entry of characters with Esperanto diacritics. Criticisms are levied against the letters with circumflex diacritics, which some find odd or cumbersome, along with their being invented specifically for Esperanto rather than borrowed from existing languages. Additionally, some of them are arguably unnecessary — for example, the use of ''ĥ'' instead of ''x'' and ''ŭ'' instead of ''w''. However, Zamenhof did not choose these letters arbitrarily: In fact, they were inspired by Czech letters with the caron diacritic but replaced the caron with a circumflex for the ease of those who had access to a French typewriter (with a circumflex dead-key). The Czech letter ''ž'' was replaced with ''ĵ'' to match the French letter ''j'' with the same sound. The letter ''ŭ'' on the other hand comes from the u-breve used in

Latin prosody Latin prosody (from Middle French ''prosodie'', from Latin ''prosōdia'', from Ancient Greek προσῳδία ''prosōidía'', "song sung to music, pronunciation of syllable") is the study of Latin poetry and its laws of meter. The following artic ...

, and is also speculated to be inspired by the Belarusian Cyrillic letter '' ў''; French typewriters can render it approximately as the French letter ''ù''.

Grammar

Esperanto words are mostly

derived Derive may refer to: * Derive (computer algebra system), a commercial system made by Texas Instruments * ''Dérive'' (magazine), an Austrian science magazine on urbanism *Dérive, a psychogeographical concept See also * *Derivation (disambiguatio ...

by stringing together roots, grammatical endings, and at times

es and

es. This process is regular so that people can create new words as they speak and be understood. Compound words are formed with a modifier-first, head-final order, as in English (compare "birdsong" and "songbird," and likewise, and ). Speakers may optionally insert an ''o'' between the words in a compound noun if placing them together directly without the ''o'' would make the resulting word hard to say or understand. The different parts of speech are marked by their own suffixes: all common nouns end in , all adjectives in , all derived adverbs in , and all verbs except the jussive (or imperative) and infinitive end in , specifically in one of six tense and mood suffixes, such as the present tense ; the jussive mood, which is tenseless, ends in . Nouns and adjectives have two cases:

nominative In grammar, the nominative case (abbreviated ), subjective case, straight case or upright case is one of the grammatical cases of a noun or other part of speech, which generally marks the subject of a verb or (in Latin and formal variants of Engl ...

for grammatical subjects and in general, and accusative for direct objects and (after a preposition) to indicate direction of movement. Singular nouns used as grammatical subjects end in , plural subject nouns in (pronounced

i̯ The voiced palatal approximant, or yod, is a type of consonant used in many spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is . The equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is j, and in the Americanist phonetic n ...

like English "oy"). Singular direct object forms end in , and plural direct objects with the combination ( i̯n rhymes with "coin"): indicates that the word is a noun, indicates the plural, and indicates the accusative (direct object) case. Adjectives agree with their nouns; their endings are singular subject ( rhymes with "ha!"), plural subject (

pronounced "eye"), singular object , and plural object ( i̯n rhymes with "fine"). The suffix , besides indicating the direct object, is used to indicate movement and a few other things as well. The six verb inflections consist of three tenses and three moods. They are present tense ,

future tense In grammar, a future tense (abbreviated ) is a verb form that generally marks the event described by the verb as not having happened yet, but expected to happen in the future. An example of a future tense form is the French ''aimera'', meaning ...

, past tense , infinitive mood , conditional mood and

jussive mood The jussive (abbreviated ) is a grammatical mood of verbs for issuing orders, commanding, or exhorting (within a subjunctive framework). English verbs are not marked for this mood. The mood is similar to the ''cohortative'' mood, which typically ap ...

(used for wishes and commands). Verbs are not marked for person or number. Thus, means "to sing", means "I sing", means "you sing", and means "they sing". Word order is comparatively free. Adjectives may precede or follow nouns; subjects, verbs and objects may occur in any order. However, the article "the",

demonstrative Demonstratives (abbreviated ) are words, such as ''this'' and ''that'', used to indicate which entities are being referred to and to distinguish those entities from others. They are typically deictic; their meaning depending on a particular frame ...

s such as "that" and

preposition Prepositions and postpositions, together called adpositions (or broadly, in traditional grammar, simply prepositions), are a class of words used to express spatial or temporal relations (''in'', ''under'', ''towards'', ''before'') or mark various ...

s (such as "at") must come before their related nouns. Similarly, the negative "not" and conjunctions such as "and" and "that" must precede the phrase or

clause In language, a clause is a constituent that comprises a semantic predicand (expressed or not) and a semantic predicate. A typical clause consists of a subject and a syntactic predicate, the latter typically a verb phrase composed of a verb with ...

that they introduce. In copular (A = B) clauses, word order is just as important as in English: "people are animals" is distinguished from "animals are people".

Vocabulary

The core vocabulary of Esperanto was defined by , published by Zamenhof in 1887. This book listed 900 roots; these could be expanded into tens of thousands of words using prefixes, suffixes, and compounding. In 1894, Zamenhof published the first Esperanto

dictionary A dictionary is a listing of lexemes from the lexicon of one or more specific languages, often arranged alphabetically (or by radical and stroke for ideographic languages), which may include information on definitions, usage, etymologies ...

, , which had a larger set of roots. The rules of the language allowed speakers to borrow new roots as needed; it was recommended, however, that speakers use most international forms and then derive related meanings from these. Since then, many words have been borrowed, primarily (but not solely) from the European languages. Not all proposed borrowings become widespread, but many do, especially technical and scientific terms. Terms for everyday use, on the other hand, are more likely to be derived from existing roots; "computer", for instance, is formed from the verb "compute" and the suffix "tool". Words are also calqued; that is, words acquire new meanings based on usage in other languages. For example, the word "mouse" has acquired the meaning of a computer mouse from its usage in many languages (English ''mouse'', French ''souris'', Dutch ''muis'', Spanish ''ratón'', etc.). Esperanto speakers often debate about whether a particular borrowing is justified or whether meaning can be expressed by deriving from or extending the meaning of existing words. Some compounds and formed words in Esperanto are not entirely straightforward; for example, , literally "give out", means "publish", paralleling the usage of certain European languages (such as German ''herausgeben'', Dutch ''uitgeven'', Russian ''издать izdat'‌''). In addition, the suffix ''-um-'' has no defined meaning; words using the suffix must be learned separately (such as "to the right" and "clockwise"). There are not many idiomatic or slang words in Esperanto, as these forms of speech tend to make international communication difficult—working against Esperanto's main goal. Instead of derivations of Esperanto roots, new roots are taken from European languages in the endeavor to create an international language., Claude Piron. Vienna: , 1989. "The language wants to be elegant, not elephantine."

Sample text

The following short extract gives an idea of the character of Esperanto. (Pronunciation is covered above; the Esperanto letter ''j'' is pronounced like English ''y''.) * Esperanto: :«» * English translation: :''In many places in China, there were temples of the dragon-king. During times of drought, people would pray in the temples that the dragon-king would give rain to the human world. At that time the dragon was a symbol of the supernatural creature. Later on, it became the ancestor of the highest rulers and symbolized the absolute authority of a feudal emperor. The emperor claimed to be the son of the dragon. All of his personal possessions carried the name "dragon" and were decorated with various dragon figures. Now dragon decorations can be seen everywhere in China and legends about dragons circulate.''

Simple phrases

Listed below are some useful Esperanto words and phrases along with IPA transcriptions:

Eurocentricity

The vocabulary, orthography, phonology, and semantics are all thoroughly

European European, or Europeans, or Europeneans, may refer to: In general * ''European'', an adjective referring to something of, from, or related to Europe ** Ethnic groups in Europe ** Demographics of Europe ** European cuisine, the cuisines of Europe ...

. The vocabulary, for example, draws about three-quarters from Romance languages, with the rest split between Greek, English and German. The

has Germanic and Slavic tendencies, with internal tensions when these disagree; the semantics and phonology have been said to be Slavic.

Education

Esperanto speakers learn the language through self-directed study, online tutorials, and correspondence courses taught by volunteers. More recently, free teaching websites like and have become available. Esperanto instruction is rarely available at schools, including four primary schools in a pilot project under the supervision of the University of Manchester, and by one count at a few universities. However, outside China and Hungary, these mostly involve informal arrangements, rather than dedicated departments or state sponsorship.

Eötvös Loránd University Eötvös Loránd University ( hu, Eötvös Loránd Tudományegyetem, ELTE) is a Hungarian public research university based in Budapest. Founded in 1635, ELTE is one of the largest and most prestigious public higher education institutions in Hung ...

in Budapest had a department of Interlinguistics and Esperanto from 1966 to 2004, after which time instruction moved to vocational colleges; there are state examinations for Esperanto instructors. Additionally, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poland offers a

diplom A ''Diplom'' (, from grc, δίπλωμα ''diploma'') is an academic degree in the German-speaking countries Germany, Austria, and Switzerland and a similarly named degree in some other European countries including Albania, Bulgaria, Belarus ...

a in Interlinguistics. The Senate of Brazil passed a bill in 2009 that would make Esperanto an optional part of the curriculum in

public schools Public school may refer to: *State school (known as a public school in many countries), a no-fee school, publicly funded and operated by the government *Public school (United Kingdom), certain elite fee-charging independent schools in England and ...

, although mandatory if there is demand for it. , the bill is still under consideration by the

Chamber of Deputies The chamber of deputies is the lower house in many bicameral legislatures and the sole house in some unicameral legislatures. Description Historically, French Chamber of Deputies was the lower house of the French Parliament during the Bourbon R ...

. In the United States, Esperanto is notably offered as a weekly evening course at Stanford University's Bechtel International Center. ''Conversational Esperanto, The International Language'', is a free drop-in class that is open to Stanford students and the general public on campus during the academic year. With administrative permission, Stanford Students can take the class for two credits a quarter through the Linguistics Department. "Even four lessons are enough to get more than just the basics," the Esperanto at Stanford website reads. Esperanto-USA suggests that Esperanto can be learned in, at most, one quarter of the amount of time required for other languages.

Third-language acquisition

From 2006 to 2011, four primary schools in Britain, with 230 pupils, followed a course in " propaedeutic Esperanto"—that is, instruction in Esperanto to raise language awareness, and to accelerate subsequent learning of foreign languages—under the supervision of the University of Manchester. As they put it,

Many schools used to teach children the recorder, not to produce a nation of recorder players, but as a preparation for learning other instruments.
e teach E, or e, is the fifth letter and the second vowel letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''e'' (pronounced ); plura ...
Esperanto, not to produce a nation of Esperanto-speakers, but as a preparation for learning other languages.

The results showed that the pupils achieved enhanced metalinguistic awareness, though the study did not indicate whether a course in a language other than Esperanto would have led to similar results. Similar studies have been conducted in New Zealand, the United States, and Germany. The results of these studies were favorable, and demonstrated that studying Esperanto before another foreign language expedites the acquisition of the other, natural language. In one study in England,Williams, N. (1965) 'A language teaching experiment', ''Canadian Modern Language Review'' 22.1: 26–28 a group of European secondary school students studied Esperanto for one year, then French for three years, and ended up with a better command of French than a control group, who had studied French for a four-year period.

Community

Geography and demography

Esperanto is by far the most widely spoken constructed language in the world. Speakers are most numerous in Europe and East Asia, especially in urban areas, where they often form

Esperanto club An Esperanto club ( eo, Esperanto-klubo) is a club of Esperanto speakers, or Esperantists. In contrast to national or international Esperanto organizations, an Esperanto club usually limits its activities only to a certain city or region. Esperan ...

s.Sikosek, Ziko M. ("Esperanto without Myths"). Second edition. Antwerp: Flandra Esperanto-Ligo, 2003. Esperanto is particularly prevalent in the northern and central countries of Europe; in China, Korea, Japan, and Iran within Asia; in Brazil, and the United States in the Americas; and in Togo in Africa. Countering a common criticism against Esperanto, the

statistician A statistician is a person who works with theoretical or applied statistics. The profession exists in both the private and public sectors. It is common to combine statistical knowledge with expertise in other subjects, and statisticians may wor ...

Svend Nielsen has found no significant correlation between the number of Esperanto speakers and the similarity of a given national native language to Esperanto. He concludes that Esperanto tends to be more popular in rich countries with widespread Internet access and a tendency to contribute more to science and culture. Linguistic diversity within a country was found to have no, or perhaps a slightly reductive, correlation with Esperanto popularity.

Number of speakers

An estimate of the number of Esperanto speakers was made by

Sidney S. Culbert Sidney Spence Culbert (May 14, 1913 – October 28, 2003) was a linguist, psychologist and Esperantist. Biography Born in Miles City, Montana, Culbert moved to Tacoma, Washington with his family in 1923 and lived in Tacoma and Seattle for mo ...

, a retired psychology professor at the University of Washington and a longtime Esperantist, who tracked down and tested Esperanto speakers in sample areas in dozens of countries over a period of twenty years. Culbert concluded that between one and two million people speak Esperanto at Foreign Service Level 3, "professionally proficient" (able to communicate moderately complex ideas without hesitation, and to follow speeches, radio broadcasts, etc.).Culbert, Sidney S
Three letters about his method for estimating the number of Esperanto speakers
, scanned and HTMLized by David Wolff Culbert's estimate was not made for Esperanto alone, but formed part of his listing of estimates for all languages of more than one million speakers, published annually in the World Almanac and Book of Facts. Culbert's most detailed account of his methodology is found in a 1989 letter to David Wolff. Since Culbert never published detailed intermediate results for particular countries and regions, it is difficult to independently gauge the accuracy of his results. In the Almanac, his estimates for numbers of language speakers were rounded to the nearest million, thus the number of Esperanto speakers is shown as two million. This latter figure appears in ''

Ethnologue ''Ethnologue: Languages of the World'' (stylized as ''Ethnoloɠue'') is an annual reference publication in print and online that provides statistics and other information on the living languages of the world. It is the world's most comprehensiv ...

''. Assuming that this figure is accurate, that means that about 0.03% of the world's population speaks the language. Although it does not meet Zamenhof's goal of a universal language, it still represents a level of popularity unmatched by any other constructed language. Marcus Sikosek (now Ziko van Dijk) has challenged this figure of 1.6 million as exaggerated. He estimated that even if Esperanto speakers were evenly distributed, assuming one million Esperanto speakers worldwide would lead one to expect about 180 in the city of Cologne. Van Dijk finds only 30

fluent Fluency (also called volubility and eloquency) is the property of a person or of a system that delivers information quickly and with expertise. Language use Language fluency is one of a variety of terms used to characterize or measure a person ...

speakers in that city, and similarly smaller-than-expected figures in several other places thought to have a larger-than-average concentration of Esperanto speakers. He also notes that there are a total of about 20,000 members of the various Esperanto organizations (other estimates are higher). Though there are undoubtedly many Esperanto speakers who are not members of any Esperanto organization, he thinks it unlikely that there are fifty times more speakers than organization members. Finnish linguist Jouko Lindstedt, an expert on native-born Esperanto speakers, presented the following schemeLindstedt, Jouko. "Re: " (posting)
DENASK-L@helsinki.fi
, April 22, 1996. to show the overall proportions of language capabilities within the Esperanto community: * 1,000 have Esperanto as their native family language. * 10,000 speak it fluently. * 100,000 can use it actively. * One million understand a large amount passively. * Ten million have studied it to some extent at some time. In 2017, doctoral student Svend Nielsen estimated around 63,000 Esperanto speakers worldwide, taking into account association memberships, user-generated data from Esperanto websites and census statistics. This number, however, was disputed by statistician Sten Johansson, who questioned the reliability of the source data and highlighted a wide margin of error, the latter point with which Nielsen agrees. Both have stated, however, that this new number is likely more realistic than some earlier projections. In the absence of Dr. Culbert's detailed sampling data, or any other census data, it is impossible to state the number of speakers with certainty. According to the website of the Universal Esperanto Association:

Numbers of textbooks sold and membership of local societies put "the number of people with some knowledge of the language in the hundreds of thousands and possibly millions".

Native speakers

Native Esperanto speakers, , have learned the language from birth from Esperanto-speaking parents. This usually happens when Esperanto is the chief or only common language in an international family, but sometimes occurs in a family of Esperanto speakers who often use the language. The 15th edition of ''Ethnologue'' cited estimates that there were 200 to 2,000 native speakers in 1996, but these figures were removed from the 16th and 17th editions. The 2019 online version of ''Ethnologue'' gives "L1 users: 1,000 (Corsetti et al 2004)". As of 1996, there were approximately 350 attested cases of families with native Esperanto speakers (which means there were around 700 Esperanto speaking natives in these families, not accounting for older native speakers). However, native speakers do not occupy an authoritative position in the Esperanto community, as they would in other language communities. This presents a challenge to linguists, whose usual source of grammaticality and meanings are native speakers.

Culture

Esperantists can access an international culture, including a large body of original as well as translated literature. There are more than 25,000 Esperanto books, both originals and translations, as well as several regularly distributed

Esperanto magazines Esperanto periodicals have been an important element of the Esperanto movement since its beginning because it was one of the only practical ways the language could be used between conferences. The first Esperanto periodical was '' La Esperantist ...

. In 2013 a museum about Esperanto opened in China. Esperantists use the language for free accommodations with Esperantists in 92 countries using the or to develop pen pals through '. Every year, Esperantists meet for the

World Congress of Esperanto The World Esperanto Congress ( eo, Universala Kongreso de Esperanto, UK) is an annual Esperanto convention. It has the longest tradition among international Esperanto conventions, with an almost unbroken run for 113 years. The congresses have be ...

''()''. Historically, much Esperanto music, such as , has been in various folk traditions. There is also a variety of classical and semi-classical choral music, both original and translated, as well as large ensemble music that includes voices singing Esperanto texts. Lou Harrison, who incorporated styles and instruments from many world cultures in his music, used Esperanto titles and/or texts in several of his works, most notably (1973). David Gaines used Esperanto poems as well as an excerpt from a speech by Dr. Zamenhof for his ''Symphony No. One (Esperanto)'' for mezzo-soprano and orchestra (1994–98). He wrote original Esperanto text for his (''I Can Cry No Longer'') for unaccompanied SATB choir (1994). There are also shared traditions, such as

Zamenhof Day Zamenhof Day ( eo, Zamenhofa Tago, Polish: ), also called Esperanto Book Day, is celebrated on 15 December, the birthday of Esperanto creator L. L. Zamenhof. It is the most widely celebrated day in Esperanto culture.behaviour Behavior (American English) or behaviour (British English) is the range of actions and mannerisms made by individuals, organisms, systems or artificial entities in some environment. These systems can include other systems or organisms as wel ...

patterns. Esperantists speak primarily in Esperanto at international Esperanto meetings. Esperanto proponents, such as Prof. Humphrey Tonkin of the University of Hartford, argue that Esperanto is "culturally neutral by design, as it was intended to be a facilitator between cultures, not to be the carrier of any one national culture". The late Scottish Esperanto author William Auld wrote extensively on the subject, arguing that Esperanto is "the expression of a common human culture, unencumbered by national frontiers. Thus it is considered a culture on its own." Critics have argued that the language is eurocentric, as it draws much of its vocabulary from European languages.

Esperanto heritage

Several Esperanto associations also advance education in and about Esperanto and aim to preserve and promote the culture and heritage of Esperanto. Poland added Esperanto to its list of

intangible cultural heritage An intangible cultural heritage (ICH) is a practice, representation, expression, knowledge, or skill considered by UNESCO to be part of a place's cultural heritage. Buildings, historic places, monuments, and artifacts are cultural property. Int ...

in 2014.

Notable authors in Esperanto

Some authors of works in Esperanto are: *

Muztar Abbasi Allama Muztar Abbasi (1931 – 26 February 2004) was a Pakistani Muslim scholar who belonged to the Dhund Abbasi tribe of Murree Hills in the Rawalpindi District. He was a supporter of the Esperanto language in Pakistan. He was patron in chief ...

(translated the Quran into Esperanto) * William Auld *

Julio Baghy Julio Baghy (13 January 1891, Szeged – 18 March 1967, Budapest; in Hungarian Baghy Gyula) was a Hungarian actor and one of the leading authors of the Esperanto movement. He is the author of several famous novels but it is particularly in t ...

* Kazimierz Bein () * Marjorie Boulton * Jorge Camacho *

Fernando de Diego Fernando de Diego (1919–2005) was a Spanish journalist and linguist. Translated works *The land of Alvargonzález of Antonio Machado ( 1969 ) *Gypsy Ballads of Federico Garcia Lorca ( 1971 ) *Rhymes Gustavo Adolfo Becquer ( 1972 ) *The tree of ...

(mainly translations) *

Vasili Eroshenko Vasili Yakovlevich Eroshenko (russian: Василий Яковлевич Ерошенко uk, Василь Якович Єрошенко) (12 January 1890 – 23 December 1952) was a blind writer, translator, esperantist, linguist, traveler, ...

* Jean Forge * Antoni Grabowski * Kalman Kalocsay *

Anna Löwenstein Anna Löwenstein (also spelt Lowenstein; born 1951) is a British Esperantist.Kenji Miyazawa (translated his pre-existing works into Esperanto) * Nikolai Nekrasov *

István Nemere István Nemere (born in Pécs on 8 November 1944) is a Hungarian novelist, Esperantist, and translator. He has written 744 published books as of November 2020, mostly in Hungarian, over twenty novels in Esperanto. He has been a notable figur ...

* Claude Piron *

Edmond Privat Edmond Privat (17 August 1889 – 28 August 1962) was a Francophone Swiss Esperantist. A historian, university professor, author, journalist and peace activist, he was a graduate of the University of Geneva and a lecturer for the World Peace Founda ...

Frederic Pujulà i Vallès Frederic Pujulà i Vallès () (12 November 1877 – 14 February 1962) was a Spanish journalist, dramatist, and a passionate Esperantist and contributor to the field of Esperanto literature. Born in Palamós, Girona, he travelled through Europ ...

Baldur Ragnarsson Baldur Ragnarsson (25 August 1930 – 25 December 2018) was an Icelandic poet and author of Esperanto works. He was a teacher and a superintendent of schools in Iceland. Esperanto Baldur learned Esperanto at school in 1949 and was active in ...

* Reto Rossetti * Raymond Schwartz *

Tibor Sekelj Tibor Sekelj (14 February 1912 – 20 September 1988), also known as ''Székely Tibor'' according to Hungarian orthography, was a Hungarian born polyglot, explorer, author, and 'citizen of the world.' In 1986 he was elected a member of the Acad ...

* Tivadar Soros *

Spomenka Štimec Spomenka Štimec (born 4 January 1949) is a Croatian writer who is an acclaimed contemporary writer in Esperanto, and also significant to Esperanto in Croatia. In 1994 she shared the cultural award ''Alena Esperanto-Kulturpremio'' with the magaz ...

* Éva Tófalvy *

Vladimir Varankin Vladimir Valentinovich Varankin (12 November 1902 – 3 October 1938) was a Soviet writer of literature in Esperanto, an instructor of western European history, and director of the Moscow Ped. Instituto for foreign languages. He wrote the nove ...

Gaston Waringhien Gaston Waringhien (July 20, 1901 – December 20, 1991) was a French linguist, lexicographer, and Esperantist. He wrote poems as well as essays and books on linguistics. He was chairman of the Akademio de Esperanto. Books * ''Plena Vortaro'' (193 ...

* Þórbergur Þórðarson

Popular culture

In the futuristic novel '' Lord of the World'' by Robert Hugh Benson, Esperanto is presented as the predominant language of the world, much as Latin is the language of the Church. A reference to Esperanto appears in the science-fiction story '' War with the Newts'' by Karel Čapek, published in 1936. As part of a passage on what language the salamander-looking creatures with human cognitive ability should learn, it is noted that "...in the Reform schools, Esperanto was taught as the medium of communication." (P. 206). Esperanto has been used in many films and novels. Typically, this is done either to add the exotic flavour of a foreign language without representing any particular ethnicity, or to avoid going to the trouble of inventing a new language. The

Charlie Chaplin Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin Jr. (16 April 188925 December 1977) was an English comic actor, filmmaker, and composer who rose to fame in the era of silent film. He became a worldwide icon through his screen persona, the Tramp, and is consider ...

film '' The Great Dictator'' (1940) showed Jewish ghetto shop signs in Esperanto. Two full-length feature films have been produced with

dialogue Dialogue (sometimes spelled dialog in American English) is a written or spoken conversational exchange between two or more people, and a literary and theatrical form that depicts such an exchange. As a philosophical or didactic device, it is c ...

entirely in Esperanto: '','' in 1964, and '' Incubus,'' a 1965

B-movie A B movie or B film is a low-budget commercial motion picture. In its original usage, during the Golden Age of Hollywood, the term more precisely identified films intended for distribution as the less-publicized bottom half of a double featur ...

horror film which is also notable for starring William Shatner shortly before he began working on ''

Star Trek ''Star Trek'' is an American science fiction media franchise created by Gene Roddenberry, which began with the eponymous 1960s television series and quickly became a worldwide pop-culture phenomenon. The franchise has expanded into vari ...

''. In ''Captain Fantastic'' (2016) there is a dialogue in Esperanto. The 1994 film ''Street Fighter'' contains Esperanto dialogue spoken by the character Sagat. Finally, Mexican film director

Alfonso Cuarón Alfonso Cuarón Orozco ( , ; born 28 November 1961) is a Mexican filmmaker. He is known for directing films in a variety of genres including the family drama ''A Little Princess (1995 film), A Little Princess'' (1995), the romantic drama ''Gre ...

has publicly shown his fascination for Esperanto, going as far as naming his film production company Esperanto Filmoj ("Esperanto Films").

Science

In 1921 the

French Academy of Sciences The French Academy of Sciences (French: ''Académie des sciences'') is a learned society, founded in 1666 by Louis XIV of France, Louis XIV at the suggestion of Jean-Baptiste Colbert, to encourage and protect the spirit of French Scientific me ...

recommended using Esperanto for international scientific communication. A few scientists and mathematicians, such as Maurice Fréchet (mathematics), John C. Wells (linguistics),

Helmar Frank Helmar Gunter Frank (19 February 1933, Waiblingen – 15 December 2013, Paderborn) was a German mathematician and pedagogist. He was among the first scientists to apply mathematical methods in teaching and psychology. He established a method to me ...

(pedagogy and cybernetics), and

Nobel laureate The Nobel Prizes ( sv, Nobelpriset, no, Nobelprisen) are awarded annually by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the Swedish Academy, the Karolinska Institutet, and the Norwegian Nobel Committee to individuals and organizations who make out ...

Reinhard Selten (economics) have published part of their work in Esperanto. Frank and Selten were among the founders of the International Academy of Sciences in San Marino, sometimes called the "Esperanto University", where Esperanto is the primary language of teaching and administration. A message in Esperanto was recorded and included in '' Voyager 1''s Golden Record.

Commerce and trade

Esperanto business groups have been active for many years. Research conducted in the 1920s by the French Chamber of Commerce and reported in '' The New York Times'' suggested that Esperanto seemed to be the best business language. The privacy-oriented

cryptocurrency A cryptocurrency, crypto-currency, or crypto is a digital currency designed to work as a medium of exchange through a computer network that is not reliant on any central authority, such as a government or bank, to uphold or maintain it. It i ...

, Monero, takes its name from the Esperanto word for ''coin''.

Goals of the movement

Zamenhof had three goals, as he wrote already in 1887: to create an easy language, to create a language ready to use "whether the language be universally accepted or not" and to find some means to get many people to learn the language. So Zamenhof's intention was not only to create an easy-to-learn language to foster peace and international understanding as a general language, but also to create a language for immediate use by a (small) language community. Esperanto was to serve as an international auxiliary language, that is, as a universal second language, not to replace ethnic languages. This goal was shared by Zamenhof among Esperanto speakers at the beginning of the movement. Later, Esperanto speakers began to see the language and the culture that had grown up around it as ends in themselves, even if Esperanto is never adopted by the United Nations or other international organizations. Esperanto speakers who want to see Esperanto adopted officially or on a large scale worldwide are commonly called , from , meaning "final victory". It has to be noted that there are two kinds of "finvenkismo"–"desubismo" and "desuprismo"; the first aims to spread Esperanto between ordinary people ("desube", from below) aiming to form a steadily growing community of Esperanto speakers. The second aims to act from above ("desupre"), beginning with politicians. Zamenhof considered the first way to have a better perspective, as "for such affairs as ours, governments come with their approval and help usually only, when everything is already finished". Those who focus on the intrinsic value of the language are commonly called , from Rauma, Finland, where a declaration on the short-term improbability of the and the value of Esperanto culture was made at the International Youth Congress in 1980. However the "Manifesto de Raŭmo" clearly mentions the intention to further spread the language: "We want to spread Esperanto to put into effect its positive values more and more, step by step". In 1996 the Prague Manifesto was adopted at the annual congress of the Universal Esperanto Association (UEA); it was subscribed by individual participants and later by other Esperanto speakers. More recently, language-learning apps like Duolingo and Amikumu have helped to increase the amount of fluent speakers of Esperanto, and find others in their area to speak the language with.

Symbols and flags

The earliest flag, and the one most commonly used today, features a green five-pointed star against a white

canton Canton may refer to: Administrative division terminology * Canton (administrative division), territorial/administrative division in some countries, notably Switzerland * Township (Canada), known as ''canton'' in Canadian French Arts and ent ...

, upon a field of green. It was proposed to Zamenhof by Richard Geoghegan, author of the first Esperanto textbook for English speakers, in 1887. The flag was approved in 1905 by delegates to the first conference of Esperantists at Boulogne-sur-Mer. The green star on white (') is also used by itself as a round (buttonhole, etc.) emblem by many esperantists, among other reasons to enhance their visibility outside the Esperanto world. A version with an "" superimposed over the green star is sometimes seen. Other variants include that for Christian Esperantists, with a white Christian cross superimposed upon the green star, and that for Leftists, with the color of the field changed from green to red. In 1987, a second flag design was chosen in a contest organized by the UEA celebrating the first centennial of the language. It featured a white background with two stylised curved "E"s facing each other. Dubbed the "" ( jubilee symbol), it attracted criticism from some Esperantists, who dubbed it the "" (melon) because of the design's elliptical shape. It is still in use, though to a lesser degree than the traditional symbol, known as the "" (green star).

Politics

Esperanto has been placed in many proposed political situations. The most popular of these is the

Europe–Democracy–Esperanto Europe–Democracy–Esperanto (EDE, E–D–E, or E° D° E°; Esperanto: ''Eŭropo–Demokratio–Esperanto'') is an electoral list, which participates in the European elections. The party's main platform is the introduction of Esperanto as ...

, which aims to establish Esperanto as the official language of the European Union. Grin's Report, published in 2005 by François Grin, found that the use of English as the

lingua franca A lingua franca (; ; for plurals see ), also known as a bridge language, common language, trade language, auxiliary language, vehicular language, or link language, is a language systematically used to make communication possible between groups ...

within the European Union costs billions annually and significantly benefits English-speaking countries financially.. The report considered a scenario where Esperanto would be the lingua franca, and found that it would have many advantages, particularly economically speaking, as well as ideologically. Left-wing currents exist in the wider Esperanto world, mostly organized through the Sennacieca Asocio Tutmonda founded by French theorist Eugène Lanti. Other notable Esperanto socialists include Nikolai Nekrasov and

. Both Nekrasov and Varankin were arrested during the

Stalinist repressions Stalinist repressions is a period in Soviet history during the Stalin era. Examples include: * Anti-cosmopolitan campaign (late 1948) * Dekulakization (1929–1933) * Doctor's Plot (1951–1953) * Great Purge (1936–1938), the most usual meaning * ...

of the late 1930s. Nekrasov was accused of being "an organizer and leader of a fascist, espionage, terrorist organization of Esperantists", and executed on October 4, 1938. Varankin was executed on October 3, 1938.

Religion

Oomoto

The Oomoto religion encourages the use of Esperanto among its followers and includes Zamenhof as one of its deified spirits.

Baháʼí Faith

The Baháʼí Faith encourages the use of an auxiliary international language. `Abdu'l-Bahá praised the ideal of Esperanto, and there was an affinity between Esperantists and Baháʼís during the late 19th century and early 20th century. On February 12, 1913, `Abdu'l-Bahá gave a talk to the Paris Esperanto Society, stating:

Now, praise be to God that Dr. Zamenhof has invented the Esperanto language. It has all the potential qualities of becoming the international means of communication. All of us must be grateful and thankful to him for this noble effort; for in this way he has served his fellowmen well. With untiring effort and self-sacrifice on the part of its devotees Esperanto will become universal. Therefore every one of us must study this language and spread it as far as possible so that day by day it may receive a broader recognition, be accepted by all nations and governments of the world, and become a part of the curriculum in all the public schools. I hope that Esperanto will be adopted as the language of all the future international conferences and congresses, so that all people need acquire only two languages—one their own tongue and the other the international language. Then perfect union will be established between all the people of the world. Consider how difficult it is today to communicate with various nations. If one studies fifty languages one may yet travel through a country and not know the language. Therefore I hope that you will make the utmost effort, so that this language of Esperanto may be widely spread.

Lidia Zamenhof Lidia Zamenhof ( eo, Lidja Zamenhofo; 29 January 1904–1942) was a Polish writer, publisher, translator and the youngest daughter of Klara (Silbernik) and L. L. Zamenhof, the creator of Esperanto. She was an active promoter of Esperanto as ...

, daughter of L. L. Zamenhof, became a Baháʼí around 1925. James Ferdinand Morton Jr., an early member of the

Baháʼí Faith in Greater Boston The Baháʼí Faith in Greater Boston, a combined statistical area, has had glimpses of the religion in the 19th century arising to its first community of religionists at the turn of the century. Early newspaper accounts of events were followed by p ...

, was vice-president of the

Esperanto League for North America Esperanto-USA (E-USA) is the largest organization for speakers and supporters of Esperanto in the United States. It was founded in 1952 as the Esperanto League for North America (ELNA) in Sacramento, California. Headquartered in Portland, Maine, ...

. Ehsan Yarshater, the founding editor of '' Encyclopædia Iranica'', notes how as a child in Iran he learned Esperanto and that when his mother was visiting Haifa on a Baháʼí pilgrimage he wrote her a letter in Persian as well as Esperanto. At the request of 'Abdu’l-Baha,

Agnes Baldwin Alexander Agnes Baldwin Alexander (1875–1971) was an American author and distinguished member of the Baháʼí Faith. Life Agnes Baldwin Alexander was born on July 21, 1875, in the Kingdom of Hawaii. She was the youngest of five children born to William D ...

became an early advocate of Esperanto and used it to spread the Baháʼí teachings at meetings and conferences in Japan. Today there exists an active sub-community of Baháʼí Esperantists and various volumes of Baháʼí literature have been translated into Esperanto. In 1973, the Baháʼí Esperanto-League for active Baháʼí supporters of Esperanto was founded.

Spiritism

In 1908, spiritist Camilo Chaigneau wrote an article named "Spiritism and Esperanto" in the periodic ''La Vie d'Outre-Tombe'' recommending the use of Esperanto in a "central magazine" for all spiritists and esperantists. Esperanto then became actively promoted by spiritists, at least in Brazil, initially by Ismael Gomes Braga and František Lorenz; the latter is known in Brazil as Francisco Valdomiro Lorenz, and was a pioneer of both spiritist and Esperantist movements in this country. The Brazilian Spiritist Federation publishes Esperanto coursebooks, translations of Spiritism's basic books, and encourages Spiritists to become Esperantists. William T. Stead, a famous spiritualist and occultist in the United Kingdom, co-founded the first Esperanto club in the U.K.

Theosophy

The Teozofia Esperanta Ligo (Theosophycal Esperantist League) was formed in 1911, and the organization's journal, ''Espero Teozofia'', was published from 1913 to 1928.

Bible translations

The first translation of the Bible into Esperanto was a translation of the Tanakh (or Old Testament) done by

. The translation was reviewed and compared with other languages' translations by a group of British clergy and scholars before its publication at the

British and Foreign Bible Society The British and Foreign Bible Society, often known in England and Wales as simply the Bible Society, is a non-denominational Christian Bible society with charity status whose purpose is to make the Bible available throughout the world. The Soc ...

in 1910. In 1926 this was published along with a New Testament translation, in an edition commonly called the "". In the 1960s, the tried to organize a new, ecumenical Esperanto Bible version. Since then, the Dutch Remonstrant pastor Gerrit Berveling has translated the Deuterocanonical or apocryphal books, in addition to new translations of the Gospels, some of the New Testament epistles, and some books of the Tanakh. These have been published in various separate booklets, or serialized in , but the Deuterocanonical books have appeared in recent editions of the ''Londona Biblio''.

Christianity

Esperanto-meso La Habana 2010 (Peter Knauer)

Christian Esperanto organizations and publications include: * After a failed attempt to start a Catholic Esperanto organization, Emile Peltier, a parish priest near Tours, France, published the first issue of ''Espero Katolika'' (Catholic Hope) in 1902''.'' A year after Peltier's death, the International Union of Catholic Esperantists (Internacia Katolika Unuiĝo Esperantista, IKUE) was formed in 1910. Father Max Metzger founded the World Peace League of the White Cross in 1916 and the German Catholics' Peace Association in 1919, both of which used Esperanto as their working language. Two Roman Catholic popes, John Paul II and Benedict XVI, have regularly used Esperanto in their multilingual blessings at Easter and Christmas each year since Easter 1994. * In 1911, The

International League of Christian Esperantists The International League of Christian Esperantists ( Esperanto: ''Kristana Esperantista Ligo Internacia'', KELI) is the association of protestant Esperantists. It was founded in 1911, during the Universal Congress of Esperanto in Antwerp. Its m ...

(''Kristana Esperantista Ligo Internacia'', KELI) was founded during the Universal Congress of Esperanto in Anvers. The founder, Paul Hübner (1881-1970), was an early supporter of the Nazi movement, a fact which disenfranchised liberal and Jewish members, thus severely limiting the growth of the KELI during the first half of the 20th century. KELI's bimonthly interdenominational magazine, ''Dia Regno'', continues to be published and is reportedly made available to readers in 48 countries. They have also published several Esperanto hymnals including the 1971 ''Adoru Kantante'' (Worship by Singing) and ''Tero kaj Ĉielo Kantu'' (Earth and Heaven Sing). * The

Quaker Quakers are people who belong to a historically Protestant Christian set of Christian denomination, denominations known formally as the Religious Society of Friends. Members of these movements ("theFriends") are generally united by a belie ...

Esperanto Society (''Kvakera Esperanto-Societo'', KES) was established in 1921 and described in multiple issues of " The Friend" Advices and Queries (''Konsiloj kaj Demandoj)'' and several other Quaker texts have been translated. Well-known Esperantists who were also Quakers include authors and historians,

and Montagu Christie Butler. * The first Christadelphian publications in Esperanto were published in 1910. * Chick Publications, a publisher of Protestant fundamentalist-themed evangelistic tracts, has published a number of comic book–style tracts by

Jack T. Chick Jack Thomas Chick (April 13, 1924 – October 23, 2016) was an American cartoonist and publisher, best known for his fundamentalist Christian "Chick tracts". He expressed his perspective on a variety of issues through sequential-art morali ...

translated into Esperanto, including "This Was Your Life!" ("") * The Book of Mormon has been partially translated into Esperanto, although the translation has not been officially endorsed by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. There exists a group of Latter-day Saint Esperantists who distribute church literature in the language. * There are instances of Christian apologists and teachers using Esperanto as a medium. Nigerian pastor Bayo Afolaranmi's "Spirita nutraĵo" ("spiritual food") Yahoo mailing list, for example, has hosted weekly messages since 2003.

Islam

Ayatollah Khomeini Ruhollah Khomeini, Ayatollah Khomeini, Imam Khomeini ( , ; ; 17 May 1900 – 3 June 1989) was an Iranian political and religious leader who served as the first supreme leader of Iran from 1979 until his death in 1989. He was the founder of ...

of Iran called on Muslims to learn Esperanto and praised its use as a medium for better understanding among peoples of different religious backgrounds. After he suggested that Esperanto replace English as an international ''

'', it began to be used in the seminaries of

Qom Qom (also spelled as "Ghom", "Ghum", or "Qum") ( fa, قم ) is the seventh largest metropolis and also the seventh largest city in Iran. Qom is the capital of Qom Province. It is located to the south of Tehran. At the 2016 census, its popul ...

. An Esperanto translation of the Qur'an was published by the state shortly thereafter.

Modifications

Though Esperanto itself has changed little since the publication of (''Foundation of Esperanto''), a number of reform projects have been proposed over the years, starting with Zamenhof's proposals in 1894 and in 1907. Several later constructed languages, such as Universal, Saussure, Romániço, Internasia, Esperanto sen Fleksio, and Mundolingvo, were all based on Esperanto. In modern times, conscious attempts have been made to eliminate perceived sexism in the language, such as

Riism (, possessive: ) is a singular third-person gender-neutral pronoun in Esperanto intended as an alternative to the gender-specific ("he") and ("she"). It is used by some speakers when the gender of a person is not known or when it is not des ...

. Many words with now have alternative spellings with and occasionally , so that may also be spelled ; see

Esperanto phonology Esperanto is a constructed international auxiliary language designed to have a simple phonology. The creator of Esperanto, L. L. Zamenhof, described Esperanto pronunciation by comparing the sounds of Esperanto with the sounds of several major Eu ...

for further details of replacement. Reforms aimed at altering country names have also resulted in a number of different options, either due to disputes over suffixes or Eurocentrism in naming various countries.

Criticism

There have been numerous objections to Esperanto over the years. For example, there has been criticism that Esperanto is not neutral enough, but also that it should convey a specific culture, which would make it less neutral; that Esperanto does not draw on a wide enough selection of the world's languages, but also that it should be more narrowly European.

Language-neutrality

Esperantists often argue for Esperanto as a culturally neutral means of communication. However, it is often accused of being Eurocentric. This is most often noted in regard to the vocabulary, but applies equally to the orthography, phonology, and semantics, all of which are thoroughly

. The vocabulary, for example, draws about three-quarters from Romance languages, and the remainder primarily from Greek, English and German. The

was inspired by Romance, and the phonology and semantics by Slavic and Germanic languages. The grammar is arguably more European than not. Supporters have argued that the agglutinative grammar and verb regularity of Esperanto has more in common with Asian languages than with European ones. A 2010 typological study concluded that "Esperanto is indeed somewhat European in character, but considerably less so than the European languages themselves." Critics argue that a truly neutral language would draw its vocabulary from a much wider variety of languages, so as not to give an unfair advantage to speakers of any of them. Although a truly representative sampling of the world's thousands of languages would be unworkable, a derivation from, e.g. the Romance, Germanic,

Semitic Semitic most commonly refers to the Semitic languages, a name used since the 1770s to refer to the language family currently present in West Asia, North and East Africa, and Malta. Semitic may also refer to: Religions * Abrahamic religions ** ...

, Indo-Aryan,

Bantu Bantu may refer to: *Bantu languages, constitute the largest sub-branch of the Niger–Congo languages *Bantu peoples, over 400 peoples of Africa speaking a Bantu language *Bantu knots, a type of African hairstyle *Black Association for Nationali ...

, and Sino-Tibetan language families would strike many as being fairer than Esperanto-like solutions, as these families cover about 60% of the world's population, compared to a fifth for Romance and Germanic.

Gender-neutrality

Esperanto is frequently accused of being inherently

sexist Sexism is prejudice or discrimination based on one's sex or gender. Sexism can affect anyone, but it primarily affects women and girls.There is a clear and broad consensus among academic scholars in multiple fields that sexism refers primaril ...

, because the default form of some nouns is masculine while a derived form is used for the feminine, which is said to retain traces of the male-dominated society of late 19th-century Europe of which Esperanto is a product.Bertilo
(in Esperanto) These nouns are primarily titles and kin terms, such as ''sinjoro'' "Mr, sir" vs. ''sinjorino'' "Ms, lady" and ''patro'' "father" vs. ''patrino'' "mother". In addition, nouns that denote persons and whose definitions are not explicitly male are often assumed to be male unless explicitly made female, such as ''doktoro,'' a PhD doctor (male or unspecified) versus ''doktorino,'' a female PhD. This is analogous to the situation with the English suffix ''-ess,'' as in the words ''baron/baroness'', ''waiter/waitress'', etc. On the other hand, the pronoun ''ĝi'' ("it") may be used generically to mean he/she/they; the pronoun ''li'' ("he") is always masculine and ''ŝi'' ("she") is always female, despite some authors' arguments.

Case and number agreement

Speakers of languages without grammatical case or adjectival agreement frequently complain about these aspects of Esperanto. In addition, in the past some people found the Classical Greek forms of the plural (nouns in ''-oj,'' adjectives in ''-aj)'' to be awkward, proposing instead that Italian ''-i'' be used for nouns, and that no plural be used for adjectives. These suggestions were adopted by the Ido reform. A reply to that criticism is that the presence of an accusative case allows much freedom in word order, e.g. for emphasis ("Johano batis Petron", John hit Peter; "Petron batis Johano", it is Peter whom John hit), that its absence in the "predicate of the object" avoids ambiguity ("Mi vidis la blankan domon", I saw the white house; "Mi vidis la domon blanka", the house seemed white to me) and that adjective agreement allows, among others, the use of hyperbaton in poetry (as in Latin, cf. Virgil's Eclogue 1:1 ''Tityre, tu patulæ recubans sub tegmine fagi…'' where "patulæ" (spread out) is epithet to "fagi" (beech) and their agreement in the genitive feminine binds them notwithstanding their distance in the verse).

Alphabet

The Esperanto alphabet uses two diacritics: the circumflex and the breve. The alphabet was designed with a French typewriter in mind, and although modern computers support Unicode, entering the letters with diacritic marks can be more or less problematic with certain operating systems or hardware. One of the first reform proposals (for

Esperanto 1894 Reformed Esperanto, or Esperanto 1894, is a constructed language derived from Esperanto (i.e., an '' Esperantido''), created by the original creator of Esperanto. It is notable as the only complete Esperantido by L. L. Zamenhof. Pressured to add ...

) sought to do away with these marks and the language Ido went back to the basic Latin alphabet.

Achievement of its creator's goals

One common criticism is that Esperanto has failed to live up to the hopes of its creator, who dreamed of it becoming a universal second language.Saul Levin, 1993. "Can an Artificial Language Be More than a Hobby? The Linguistic and Sociological Obstacles". In Ian Richmond (ed.) ''Aspects of internationalism: language & culture''.''The Christian Century'', 1930, 47:846 Because people were reluctant to learn a new language which hardly anyone spoke, Zamenhof asked people to sign a promise to start learning Esperanto once ten million people made the same promise. He "was disappointed to receive only a thousand responses." However, Zamenhof had the goal to "enable the learner to make direct use of his knowledge with persons of any nationality, whether the language be universally accepted or not", as he wrote in 1887. The language is currently spoken by people living in more than 100 countries; there are about 2,000 native Esperanto speakers and probably up to 100,000 people who use the language regularly. In this regard, Zamenhof was well aware that it might take much time for Esperanto to achieve his desired goals. In his speech at the 1907 World Esperanto Congress in Cambridge he said, "we hope that earlier or later, maybe after many centuries, on a neutral language foundation, understanding one another, the nations will build ... a big family circle." The poet Wisława Szymborska expressed doubt that Esperanto could "produce works of lasting value," saying it is "an artificial language without variety or dialects" and that "no one thinks in Esperanto." Esperantists have replied that "lasting value" is a statement of opinion, that Esperanto grew "naturally" by the actions of its speakers on Zamenhof's intentionally elementary ''Fundamento'', and that the last sentence ("No one thinks in Esperanto") is false-to-fact.

Continued modification

J. R. R. Tolkien wrote in support of the language in a 1932 ''British Esperantist'' article, but criticised those who sought to adapt or "tinker" with the language, which, in his opinion, harmed unanimity and the goal of achieving wide acceptance.

Eponymous entities

There are some geographical and astronomical features named after Esperanto, or after its creator L. L. Zamenhof. These include

Esperanto Island Esperanto Island is the largest and northwesternmost island in the Zed group off the north coast of Varna Peninsula on Livingston Island in the South Shetland Islands, Antarctica. The island is ice-free, rocky, rising to and extending , with sur ...

in Antarctica, and the asteroids

1421 Esperanto 1421 Esperanto, provisional designation , is a dark background asteroid from the outer regions of the asteroid belt, approximately in diameter. It was discovered on 18 March 1936, by Finnish astronomer Yrjö Väisälä at the Iso-Heikkilä Obse ...

and

1462 Zamenhof 1462 Zamenhof, provisional designation , is a carbonaceous Themistian asteroid from the outer regions of the asteroid belt, approximately 27 kilometers in diameter. It was discovered on 6 February 1938, by Finnish astronomer Yrjö Väisälä at ...

discovered by Finnish astronomer and Esperantist Yrjö Väisälä.

Example text

Article 1 of the '' Universal Declaration of Human Rights'' in Esperanto: :''Ĉiuj homoj estas denaske liberaj kaj egalaj laŭ digno kaj rajtoj. Ili posedas racion kaj konsciencon, kaj devus konduti unu al alia en spirito de frateco.'' Article 1 of the ''Universal Declaration of Human Rights'' in English: :''All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.''

Notes

References

External links

UEA.org
– Website of the Universal Esperanto Association * * '' Esperanto Bookshelf'' at Project Gutenberg
Esperanto dictionary

The invented language that found a second life online
a BBC Future article by Jose Luis Penarredonda, 10 January 2018
Esperanto.events
an overview of worldwide Esperanto events by Eventa Servo (in Esperanto). {{Authority control 1887 introductions Agglutinative languages Constructed languages Constructed languages introduced in the 1880s International auxiliary languages Multilingualism International auxiliary languages introduced in the 1880s Polish inventions

History

Creation

20th century

Official repression

Modern history

Official use

Internet

Linguistic properties

Classification

Phonology

Consonants

Vowels

Orthography

Alphabet

Pronunciation

Typing diacritics

Grammar

Vocabulary

Sample text

Simple phrases

Eurocentricity

Education

Third-language acquisition

Community

Geography and demography

Number of speakers

Native speakers

Culture

Esperanto heritage

Notable authors in Esperanto

Popular culture

Science

Commerce and trade

Goals of the movement

Symbols and flags

Politics

Religion

Oomoto

Baháʼí Faith

Spiritism

Theosophy

Bible translations

Christianity

Islam

Modifications

Criticism

Language-neutrality

Gender-neutrality

Case and number agreement

Alphabet

Achievement of its creator's goals

Continued modification

Eponymous entities

Example text

See also

Notes

References

Further reading

External links