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 Warsaw ( pl, Warszawa, ), officially the Capital City of Warsaw,, abbreviation: ''m.st. Warszawa'' is the capital and largest city of Poland. The metropolis stands on the River Vistula in east-central Poland, and its population is officia ...

-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 A person's second language, or L2, is a language that is not the native language (first language or L1) of the speaker, but is learned later. A second language may be a neighbouring language, another language of the speaker's home country, or a fo ...

for international communication, or "the international language" (). Zamenhof first described the language in '' Dr. Esperanto's International Language'' (), 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 A vocabulary is a set of familiar words within a person's language. A vocabulary, usually developed with age, serves as a useful and fundamental tool for communication and acquiring knowledge. Acquiring an extensive vocabulary is one of the la ...

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 Semantics (from grc, σημαντικός ''sēmantikós'', "significant") is the study of reference, meaning, or truth. The term can be used to refer to subfields of several distinct disciplines, including philosophy Philosophy (f ...

derive predominantly from languages of the Indo-European group. The vocabulary derives primarily from

Romance languages 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 ...

, with substantial contributions from

Germanic languages The Germanic languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family spoken natively by a population of about 515 million people mainly in Europe, North America, Oceania and Southern Africa. The most widely spoken Germanic language, Engli ...

Slavic languages The Slavic languages, also known as the Slavonic languages, are Indo-European languages spoken primarily by the Slavic peoples and their descendants. They are thought to descend from a proto-language called Proto-Slavic, spoken during the Ear ...

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 A first language, native tongue, native language, mother tongue or L1 is the first language or dialect that a person has been exposed to from birth or within the critical period. In some countries, the term ''native language'' or ''mother tongu ...

, 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 Duolingo ( ) is an American educational technology company which produces learning apps and provides language certification. On its main app, users can practice vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation and listening skills using spaced repetition. D ...

Wikipedia Wikipedia is a multilingual free online encyclopedia written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and using a wiki-based editing system. Wikipedia is the largest and most-read refer ...

Amikumu Amikumu ( ; ) is a cross-platform app for smartphones ( Android and iOS) which can be used to find people nearby who speak or learn the same languages as the user. The app was launched for Esperanto speakers on 22 April 2017 and for speakers of ...

and

Google Translate Google Translate is a multilingual neural machine translation service developed by Google to translate text, documents and websites from one language into another. It offers a website interface, a mobile app for Android and iOS, and an API t ...

. 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 The Russian Empire was an empire and the final period of the Russian monarchy from 1721 to 1917, ruling across large parts of Eurasia. It succeeded the Tsardom of Russia following the Treaty of Nystad, which ended the Great Northern War. ...

, but now part of

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populous ...

. In the 1870s, just a few years before Zamenhof created Esperanto,

Polish Polish may refer to: * Anything from or related to Poland, a country in Europe * Polish language * Poles, people from Poland or of Polish descent * Polish chicken *Polish brothers (Mark Polish and Michael Polish, born 1970), American twin screenwr ...

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

, to foster

world peace World peace, or peace on Earth, is the concept of an ideal state of peace within and among all people and nations on Planet Earth. Different cultures, religions, philosophies, and organizations have varying concepts on how such a state would ...

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 ''Fundamento de Esperanto'' (English: ''Foundation of Esperanto'') is a 1905 book by L. L. Zamenhof, in which the author explains the basic grammar rules and vocabulary that constitute the basis of the constructed language Esperanto. On August ...

'' as a definitive guide to the language. Later that year, French Esperantists organized with his participation the first

World Esperanto Congress 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 ...

, an ongoing annual conference, in

Boulogne-sur-Mer Boulogne-sur-Mer (; pcd, Boulonne-su-Mér; nl, Bonen; la, Gesoriacum or ''Bononia''), often called just Boulogne (, ), is a coastal city in Northern France. It is a sub-prefecture of the department of Pas-de-Calais. Boulogne lies on the ...

, 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 The Akademio de Esperanto (AdE; en, Academy of Esperanto, link=yes) is an independent body of Esperanto speakers who steward the evolution of said language by keeping it consistent with the ''Fundamento de Esperanto'' in accordance with the Decla ...

(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 The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identif ...

(when it was moved to an online-only event). Since the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

, 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

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 Neutral Moresnet (, , , ) was a small Belgian–Prussian condominium in western Europe that existed from 1816 to 1920 and was administered jointly by the United Kingdom of the Netherlands (Belgium after its independence in 1830) and the Kingdom ...

, 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 Kelmis (; french: La Calamine, ) is a municipality located in the Belgian province of Liège, named for the historical deposits of calamine (zinc ore) nearby. , the population was 10,881; the area is and the population density is . The municipali ...

. After the Great War, a great opportunity seemed to arise for Esperanto when the Iranian delegation to the

League of Nations The League of Nations (french: link=no, Société des Nations ) was the first worldwide intergovernmental organisation whose principal mission was to maintain world peace. It was founded on 10 January 1920 by the Paris Peace Conference that ...

proposed that it be adopted for use in international relations, following a report by

Nitobe Inazō was a Japanese people, Japanese author, educator, agricultural economist, diplomat, politician, and Protestantism, Protestant Christians, Christian during the late Meiji (era), Meiji era. Early life Nitobe was born in Morioka, Iwate, Morioka, ...

, a Japanese official delegate of the League of Nations during the 13th World Congress of Esperanto in

Prague Prague ( ; cs, Praha ; german: Prag, ; la, Praga) is the capital and largest city in the Czech Republic, and the historical capital of Bohemia. On the Vltava river, Prague is home to about 1.3 million people. The city has a temperate ...

. 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 Anationalism ( eo, sennaciismo) is a term originating from the community of Esperanto speakers. It denotes a range of cosmopolitan political concepts that combine some or all of the following tendencies and ideas: *radical antinationalism, *unive ...

and the Esperanto language. Fran Novljan was one of the chief promoters of Esperanto in the former

Kingdom of Yugoslavia The Kingdom of Yugoslavia ( sh-Latn-Cyrl, separator=" / ", Kraljevina Jugoslavija, Краљевина Југославија; sl, Kraljevina Jugoslavija) was a state in Southeast Europe, Southeast and Central Europe that existed from 1918 unt ...

. He was among the founders of the Croatian (Educational Alliance), of which he was the first secretary, and organized Esperanto institutions in

Zagreb Zagreb ( , , , ) is the capital (political), capital and List of cities and towns in Croatia#List of cities and towns, largest city of Croatia. It is in the Northern Croatia, northwest of the country, along the Sava river, at the southern slop ...

. 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 Korea ( ko, 한국, or , ) is a peninsular region in East Asia. Since 1945, it has been divided at or near the 38th parallel, with North Korea (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) comprising its northern half and South Korea (Republic o ...

, socialist thinkers pushed for the use of Esperanto through a series of columns in

The Dong-a Ilbo The ''Dong-A Ilbo'' (, literally ''East Asia Daily'') is a newspaper of record in Korea since 1920 with a daily circulation of more than 1.2 million and opinion leaders as its main readers. ''The Dong-A Ilbo'' is the parent company of Dong-A M ...

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 Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...

Francoist Spain Francoist Spain ( es, España franquista), or the Francoist dictatorship (), was the period of Spanish history between 1939 and 1975, when Francisco Franco ruled Spain after the Spanish Civil War with the title . After his death in 1975, Spai ...

up until the 1950s, and the

Soviet Union under Stalin The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...

, 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 Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Nazi Germany, Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his death in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the le ...

specifically mentioned Esperanto as an example of a language that could be used by an international Jewish conspiracy once they achieved world domination.

Esperantist An Esperantist ( eo, esperantisto) is a person who speaks, reads or writes Esperanto. According to the Declaration of Boulogne, a document agreed upon at the first World Esperanto Congress in 1905, an Esperantist is someone who speaks Esperanto ...

s were killed during the

Holocaust The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; a ...

, 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 also known as the Japanese Empire or Imperial Japan, was a historical nation-state and great power that existed from the Meiji Restoration in 1868 until the enactment of the post-World War II 1947 constitution and subsequent forma ...

, 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 The October Revolution,. officially known as the Great October Socialist Revolution. in the Soviet Union, also known as the Bolshevik Revolution, was a revolution in Russia led by the Bolshevik Party of Vladimir Lenin that was a key moment ...

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 The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...

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 Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili; – 5 March 1953) was a Georgian revolutionary and Soviet political leader who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. He held power as General Secreta ...

Leon Trotsky Lev Davidovich Bronstein. ( – 21 August 1940), better known as Leon Trotsky; uk, link= no, Лев Давидович Троцький; also transliterated ''Lyev'', ''Trotski'', ''Trotskij'', ''Trockij'' and ''Trotzky''. (), was a Russian ...

mentions that Stalin had studied Esperanto. However, in 1937, at the height of the

Great Purge The Great Purge or the Great Terror (russian: Большой террор), also known as the Year of '37 (russian: 37-й год, translit=Tridtsat sedmoi god, label=none) and the Yezhovshchina ('period of Nikolay Yezhov, Yezhov'), was General ...

, Stalin completely reversed the Soviet government's policies on Esperanto; many Esperanto speakers were executed, exiled or held in captivity in the

Gulag The Gulag, an acronym for , , "chief administration of the camps". The original name given to the system of camps controlled by the GPU was the Main Administration of Corrective Labor Camps (, )., name=, group= was the government agency in ...

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 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 The Spanish Civil War ( es, Guerra Civil Española)) or The Revolution ( es, La Revolución, link=no) among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War ( es, Cuarta Guerra Carlista, link=no) among Carlists, and The Rebellion ( es, La Rebelión, lin ...

, Francoist Spain suppressed

anarchists 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 necessari ...

, socialists and

Catalan nationalist Catalan nationalism is the ideology asserting that the Catalans are a distinct nation. Intellectually, modern Catalan nationalism can be said to have commenced as a political philosophy in the unsuccessful attempts to establish a federal state i ...

s 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 The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization whose stated purposes are to maintain international peace and international security, security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and be ...

— through

UNESCO The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) aimed at promoting world peace and security through international cooperation in education, arts, sciences and culture. It ...

— 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 development of Esperanto has continued unabated into the 21st century. The advent of the

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...

has had a significant impact on the language, as learning it has become increasingly accessible on platforms such as

, and as speakers have increasingly networked on platforms such as

. 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 Esperantujo () or Esperantio () is the Esperanto community; the community of speakers of the Esperanto language and their Esperanto culture, culture, as well as the places and institutions where the language is used. The term is used "as if it wer ...

'' ("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 Freedom of association encompasses both an individual's right to join or leave groups voluntarily, the right of the group to take collective action to pursue the interests of its members, and the right of an association to accept or decline membe ...

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

, in central-western Europe, as the world's first Esperanto state; any such plans came to an end when the

Treaty of Versailles The Treaty of Versailles (french: Traité de Versailles; german: Versailler Vertrag, ) was the most important of the peace treaties of World War I. It ended the state of war between Germany and the Allied Powers. It was signed on 28 June ...

awarded the disputed territory to Belgium, effective January 10, 1920. In addition, the self-proclaimed artificial island

micronation A micronation is a political entity whose members claim that they belong to an independent nation or sovereign state, but which lacks legal recognition by world governments or major international organizations. Micronations are classified se ...

of Rose Island, near Italy in the

Adriatic Sea The Adriatic Sea () is a body of water separating the Italian Peninsula from the Balkan Peninsula. The Adriatic is the northernmost arm of the Mediterranean Sea, extending from the Strait of Otranto (where it connects to the Ionian Sea) to t ...

, 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 Dayton is an unincorporated community and census-designated place (CDP) in Lyon County, Nevada, United States. The population was 15,153 at the 2020 census. Dayton is the first Nevada settlement and home to the oldest hotel in Nevada. History ...

, 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 China Radio International (CRI) is the state-owned international radio broadcaster of China. It is currently headquartered in the Babaoshan area of Beijing's Shijingshan District. It was founded on December 3, 1941, as Radio Peking. It late ...

, and for the internet magazine ''El Popola Ĉinio''. The

Vatican Radio Vatican Radio ( it, Radio Vaticana; la, Statio Radiophonica Vaticana) is the official broadcasting service of Vatican City. Established in 1931 by Guglielmo Marconi, today its programs are offered in 47 languages, and are sent out on short wave, ...

has an Esperanto version of its website. The

United States Army The United States Army (USA) is the land service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army of the United States in the U.S. Constitution.Article II, section 2, cla ...

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 The Universal Esperanto Association ( eo, Universala Esperanto-Asocio, UEA), also known as the World Esperanto Association, is the largest international organization of Esperanto speakers, with 5501 individual members in 121 countries and 9215 th ...

, has an official consultative relationship with the United Nations and

, 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 ''The UNESCO Courier'' is the main magazine published by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). It has the largest and widest-ranging readership of all the journals published by the United Nations and its sp ...

'' (''Unesko Kuriero en Esperanto''). Esperanto was also the first language of teaching and administration of the

International Academy of Sciences San Marino The International Academy of Sciences San Marino ( eo, Akademio Internacia de la Sciencoj San Marino, AIS) was a scientific association. It was established in 1983 and had its first convention, SUS 1, around New Year 1984 in the City of San Marino ...

. The

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 The American Radio Relay League (ARRL) is the largest membership association of amateur radio enthusiasts in the United States. ARRL is a non-profit organization, and was co-founded on April 6, 1914, by Hiram Percy Maxim and Clarence D. Tuska of ...

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 The World Service Authority (WSA), founded in 1953 by Garry Davis, is a non-profit organization that claims to educate about and promote "world citizenship", "world law", and world government. It is best known for selling unofficial fantasy do ...

, including the

World Passport The World Passport is a fantasy travel document sold by the World Service Authority, a non-profit organization founded by Garry Davis in 1954.

, are written in Esperanto, together with

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...

, French,

Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries **Spanish cuisine Other places * Spanish, Ontario, Cana ...

Russian Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including: *Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and peo ...

Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic languages, Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C ...

, and

Chinese Chinese can refer to: * Something related to China * Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity **''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation ** List of ethnic groups in China, people of va ...

(the official languages of the

Internet

On May 28, 2015, the language learning platform

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,

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 The Esperanto Wikipedia ( eo, Vikipedio en Esperanto, or ) is the Esperanto version of Wikipedia, which was started on 11 May 2001, alongside the Basque Wikipedia. With over articles , it is the - largest Wikipedia as measured by the number o ...

(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 Phonology is the branch of linguistics that studies how languages or dialects systematically organize their sounds or, for sign languages, their constituent parts of signs. The term can also refer specifically to the sound or sign system of a ...

grammar In linguistics, the grammar of a natural language is its set of structure, structural constraints on speakers' or writers' composition of clause (linguistics), clauses, phrases, and words. The term can also refer to the study of such constraint ...

, and

are based on the

Indo-European languages The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, Dutc ...

spoken in Europe. The sound inventory is essentially Slavic, as is much of the semantics, whereas the vocabulary derives primarily from

, with a lesser contribution from

, and minor contributions from Slavic languages and

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

Pragmatics In linguistics and related fields, pragmatics is the study of how context contributes to meaning. The field of study evaluates how human language is utilized in social interactions, as well as the relationship between the interpreter and the int ...

and other aspects of the language not specified by Zamenhof's original documents were influenced by the native languages of early authors, primarily

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) **Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ger ...

, and French. 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, morphologically intensively

agglutinative In linguistics, agglutination is a morphological process in which words are formed by stringing together morphemes, each of which corresponds to a single syntactic feature. Languages that use agglutination widely are called agglutinative langu ...

, and to a certain degree isolating in character". Typologically, Esperanto has

prepositions 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 ...

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 In the field of pharmacy, compounding (performed in compounding pharmacies) is preparation of a custom formulation of a medication to fit a unique need of a patient that cannot be met with commercially available products. This may be done for me ...

Phonology

Esperanto typically has 22 to 24 consonants (depending on the phonemic analysis and individual speaker), five vowels, and two

semivowel In phonetics and phonology, a semivowel, glide or semiconsonant is a sound that is phonetically similar to a vowel sound but functions as the syllable boundary, rather than as the nucleus of a syllable. Examples of semivowels in English are the ...

s 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 Stress may refer to: Science and medicine * Stress (biology), an organism's response to a stressor such as an environmental condition * Stress (linguistics), relative emphasis or prominence given to a syllable in a word, or to a word in a phrase ...

is always on the second-to-last vowel in proper Esperanto words, unless a final vowel is

elided In linguistics, an elision or deletion is the omission of one or more sounds (such as a vowel, a consonant, or a whole syllable) in a word or phrase. However, these terms are also used to refer more narrowly to cases where two words are run toget ...

, 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 The voiced alveolar trill is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents dental, alveolar, and postalveolar trills is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is r. ...

, but can also be a

uvular trill The voiced uvular trill is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , a small capital letter ''R''. This consonant is one of several collectively ...

, 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 The voiced alveolar approximant is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents the alveolar and postalveolar approximants is , a lowercase letter ''r'' rotated 18 ...

. Many other forms such as an

alveolar tap Alveolus (; pl. alveoli, adj. alveolar) is a general anatomical term for a concave cavity or pit. Uses in anatomy and zoology * Pulmonary alveolus, an air sac in the lungs ** Alveolar cell or pneumocyte ** Alveolar duct ** Alveolar macrophage * M ...

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 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

Modern Hebrew Modern Hebrew ( he, עברית חדשה, ''ʿivrít ḥadašá ', , '' lit.'' "Modern Hebrew" or "New Hebrew"), also known as Israeli Hebrew or Israeli, and generally referred to by speakers simply as Hebrew ( ), is the standard form of the He ...

, and

Modern Greek Modern Greek (, , or , ''Kiní Neoellinikí Glóssa''), generally referred to by speakers simply as Greek (, ), refers collectively to the dialects of the Greek language spoken in the modern era, including the official standardized form of the ...

. 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 The Latin script, also known as Roman script, is an alphabetic writing system based on the letters of the classical Latin alphabet, derived from a form of the Greek alphabet which was in use in the ancient Greek city of Cumae, in southern Italy ...

, using a one-sound-one-letter principle, with the exception of ͡z It includes six

letters Letter, letters, or literature may refer to: Characters typeface * Letter (alphabet), a character representing one or more of the sounds used in speech; any of the symbols of an alphabet. * Letterform, the graphic form of a letter of the alphabe ...

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 A breve (, less often , neuter form of the Latin "short, brief") is the diacritic mark ˘, shaped like the bottom half of a circle. As used in Ancient Greek, it is also called , . It resembles the caron (the wedge or in Czech, in Slo ...

). 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 IPA commonly refers to: * India pale ale, a style of beer * International Phonetic Alphabet, a system of phonetic notation * Isopropyl alcohol, a chemical compound IPA may also refer to: Organizations International * Insolvency Practitioners ...

symbols, with the exception of ''C'' – //. Esperanto ''J'' and ''C'' are used in a way familiar to speakers of

and many

, 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 Scouse (; formally known as Liverpool English or Merseyside English) is an Accent (dialect), accent and dialect of English language, English associated with Liverpool and the surrounding county of Merseyside. The Scouse accent is highly dis ...

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 Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology Technical standard, standard for the consistent character encoding, encoding, representation, and handling of Character (computing), text expre ...

, the letters with diacritics (found in the "Latin-Extended A" section of the

Unicode Standard Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. The standard, whic ...

) 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 A keyboard layout is any specific physical, visual or functional arrangement of the keys, legends, or key-meaning associations (respectively) of a computer keyboard, mobile phone, or other computer-controlled typographic keyboard. is the actua ...

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 macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. Within the market of ...

, and

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...

, for

Windows Phone Windows Phone (WP) is a discontinued family of mobile operating systems developed by Microsoft for smartphones as the replacement successor to Windows Mobile and Zune. Windows Phone featured a new user interface derived from the Metro design la ...

, and

Gboard Gboard is a virtual keyboard app developed by Google for Android and iOS devices. It was first released on iOS in May 2016, followed by a release on Android in December 2016, debuting as a major update to the already-established Google Keyboard ...

and AnySoftKeyboard for Android). 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 KDE is an international Free software movement, free software community that develops free and open-source software. As a central development hub, it provides tools and resources that allow collaborative work on this kind of software. Well-know ...

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 A caron (), háček or haček (, or ; plural ''háčeks'' or ''háčky'') also known as a hachek, wedge, check, kvačica, strešica, mäkčeň, varnelė, inverted circumflex, inverted hat, flying bird, inverted chevron, is a diacritic mark (� ...

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 A root is the part of a plant, generally underground, that anchors the plant body, and absorbs and stores water and nutrients. Root or roots may also refer to: Art, entertainment, and media * ''The Root'' (magazine), an online magazine focusing ...

, 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 Compound may refer to: Architecture and built environments * Compound (enclosure), a cluster of buildings having a shared purpose, usually inside a fence or wall ** Compound (fortification), a version of the above fortified with defensive struct ...

words are formed with a modifier-first,

head-final In linguistics, head directionality is a proposed parameter that classifies languages according to whether they are head-initial (the head of a phrase precedes its complements) or head-final (the head follows its complements). The head is the ...

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 In grammar, a part of speech or part-of-speech (abbreviated as POS or PoS, also known as word class or grammatical category) is a category of words (or, more generally, of lexical items) that have similar grammatical properties. Words that are assi ...

are marked by their own suffixes: all

common noun A proper noun is a noun that identifies a single entity and is used to refer to that entity (''Africa'', ''Jupiter'', ''Sarah'', ''Microsoft)'' as distinguished from a common noun, which is a noun that refers to a class of entities (''continent, ...

s end in , all

adjective In linguistics, an adjective (list of glossing abbreviations, abbreviated ) is a word that generally grammatical modifier, modifies a noun or noun phrase or describes its referent. Its semantic role is to change information given by the noun. Tra ...

s in , all derived adverbs in , and all

verb A verb () is a word (part of speech) that in syntax generally conveys an action (''bring'', ''read'', ''walk'', ''run'', ''learn''), an occurrence (''happen'', ''become''), or a state of being (''be'', ''exist'', ''stand''). In the usual descri ...

s except the

jussive 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 a ...

(or imperative) and

infinitive Infinitive (abbreviated ) is a linguistics term for certain verb forms existing in many languages, most often used as non-finite verbs. As with many linguistic concepts, there is not a single definition applicable to all languages. The word is deri ...

end in , specifically in one of six tense and mood suffixes, such as the

present tense The present tense (abbreviated or ) is a grammatical tense whose principal function is to locate a situation or event in the present time. The present tense is used for actions which are happening now. In order to explain and understand present ...

; 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 The accusative case (abbreviated ) of a noun is the grammatical case used to mark the direct object of a transitive verb. In the English language, the only words that occur in the accusative case are pronouns: 'me,' 'him,' 'her,' 'us,' and ‘the ...

for direct objects and (after a preposition) to indicate direction of movement.

Singular Singular may refer to: * Singular, the grammatical number that denotes a unit quantity, as opposed to the plural and other forms * Singular homology * SINGULAR, an open source Computer Algebra System (CAS) * Singular or sounder, a group of boar, ...

nouns used as

grammatical subject The subject in a simple English sentence such as ''John runs'', ''John is a teacher'', or ''John drives a car'', is the person or thing about whom the statement is made, in this case ''John''. Traditionally the subject is the word or phrase whi ...

s end in ,

plural The plural (sometimes abbreviated pl., pl, or ), in many languages, is one of the values of the grammatical category of number. The plural of a noun typically denotes a quantity greater than the default quantity represented by that noun. This de ...

subject nouns in (pronounced i̯like English "oy"). Singular

direct object In linguistics, an object is any of several types of arguments. In subject-prominent, nominative-accusative languages such as English, a transitive verb typically distinguishes between its subject and any of its objects, which can include but ...

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

(direct object) case. Adjectives agree with their nouns; their endings are singular subject ( rhymes with "ha!"), plural subject ( i̯ 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

inflection In linguistic morphology, inflection (or inflexion) is a process of word formation in which a word is modified to express different grammatical categories such as tense, case, voice, aspect, person, number, gender, mood, animacy, and defin ...

s consist of three tenses and three moods. They are

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 The past tense is a grammatical tense whose function is to place an action or situation in the past. Examples of verbs in the past tense include the English verbs ''sang'', ''went'' and ''washed''. Most languages have a past tense, with some hav ...

mood ,

conditional mood The conditional mood (abbreviated ) is a grammatical mood used in conditional sentences to express a proposition whose validity is dependent on some condition, possibly counterfactual. It may refer to a distinct verb form that expresses the condit ...

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 Article often refers to: * Article (grammar), a grammatical element used to indicate definiteness or indefiniteness * Article (publishing), a piece of nonfictional prose that is an independent part of a publication Article may also refer to: G ...

"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 In syntax and grammar, a phrase is a group of words or singular word acting as a grammatical unit. For instance, the English expression "the very happy squirrel" is a noun phrase which contains the adjective phrase "very happy". Phrases can consi ...

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 Technical may refer to: * Technical (vehicle), an improvised fighting vehicle * Technical analysis, a discipline for forecasting the future direction of prices through the study of past market data * Technical drawing, showing how something is co ...

and

scientific Science is a systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe. Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earliest archeological evidence for ...

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

calque In linguistics, a calque () or loan translation is a word or phrase borrowed from another language by literal word-for-word or root-for-root translation. When used as a verb, "to calque" means to borrow a word or phrase from another language wh ...

d; 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 A computer mouse (plural mice, sometimes mouses) is a hand-held pointing device that detects two-dimensional motion relative to a surface. This motion is typically translated into the motion of a pointer on a display, which allows a smooth c ...

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 Claude Piron, also known by the pseudonym Johán Valano, was a Swiss psychologist, Esperantist, translator, and writer. He worked as a translator for the United Nations from 1956 to 1961 and then for the World Health Organization. He was a prolif ...

. 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

transcriptions:

Eurocentricity

The

orthography An orthography is a set of conventions for writing a language, including norms of spelling, hyphenation, capitalization, word breaks, emphasis, and punctuation. Most transnational languages in the modern period have a writing system, and mos ...

, and

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

, with the rest split between

and

. 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 , mottoeng = Knowledge, Wisdom, Humanity , established = 2004 – University of Manchester Predecessor institutions: 1956 – UMIST (as university college; university 1994) 1904 – Victoria University of Manchester 1880 – Victoria Univer ...

, and by one count at a few universities. However, outside China and

Hungary Hungary ( hu, Magyarország ) is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning of the Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the south, Croatia a ...

, 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 ...

Budapest Budapest (, ; ) is the capital and most populous city of Hungary. It is the ninth-largest city in the European Union by population within city limits and the second-largest city on the Danube river; the city has an estimated population ...

had a department of

Interlinguistics Interlinguistics, as the science of planned languages, has existed for more than a century as a specific branch of linguistics for the study of various aspects of linguistic communication. Interlinguistics is a discipline formalized by Otto Jespers ...

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 Adam; el, Ἀδάμ, Adám; la, Adam is the name given in Genesis 1-5 to the first human. Beyond its use as the name of the first man, ''adam'' is also used in the Bible as a pronoun, individually as "a human" and in a collective sense as " ...

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 The Federal Senate ( pt, Senado Federal) is the upper house of the National Congress of Brazil, National Congress of Brazil. When created under the Brazilian Constitution of 1824, Imperial Constitution in 1824, it was based on the House of Lo ...

passed a bill in 2009 that would make Esperanto an optional part of the curriculum in public schools, 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 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 ...

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 Britain most often refers to: * The United Kingdom, a sovereign state in Europe comprising the island of Great Britain, the north-eastern part of the island of Ireland and many smaller islands * Great Britain, the largest island in the United King ...

, 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 Recorder or The Recorder may refer to: Newspapers * ''Indianapolis Recorder'', a weekly newspaper * ''The Recorder'' (Massachusetts newspaper), a daily newspaper published in Greenfield, Massachusetts, US * ''The Recorder'' (Port Pirie), a news ...
, not to produce a nation of recorder players, but as a preparation for learning other instruments. e teachEsperanto, 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 New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...

, 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 A constructed language (sometimes called a conlang) is a language whose phonology, grammar, and vocabulary, instead of having developed naturally, are consciously devised for some purpose, which may include being devised for a work of fiction. ...

in the world. Speakers are most numerous in Europe and East Asia, especially in urban areas, where they often form Esperanto clubs.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,

, Japan, and

Iran Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkmeni ...

within Asia; in

Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...

, and the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

in the Americas; and in

Togo Togo (), officially the Togolese Republic (french: République togolaise), is a country in West Africa. It is bordered by Ghana to the west, Benin to the east and Burkina Faso to the north. It extends south to the Gulf of Guinea, where its c ...

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, a retired

psychology Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries betwe ...

professor at the

University of Washington The University of Washington (UW, simply Washington, or informally U-Dub) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington. Founded in 1861, Washington is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast; it was established in Seattle a ...

and a longtime

, 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 ''The World Almanac and Book of Facts'' is a US-published reference work, an almanac conveying information about such subjects as world changes, tragedies, and sports feats. It has been published yearly from 1868 to 1875, and again every year sinc ...

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 Universal language may refer to a hypothetical or historical language spoken and understood by all or most of the world's people. In some contexts, it refers to a means of communication said to be understood by all humans. It may be the idea of ...

, 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 Cologne ( ; german: Köln ; ksh, Kölle ) is the largest city of the German western States of Germany, state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) and the List of cities in Germany by population, fourth-most populous city of Germany with 1.1 m ...

. Van Dijk finds only 30 fluent 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 Finnish may refer to: * Something or someone from, or related to Finland * Culture of Finland * Finnish people or Finns, the primary ethnic group in Finland * Finnish language, the national language of the Finnish people * Finnish cuisine See also ...

linguist Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguis ...

Jouko Lindstedt Jouko Lindstedt (born in 1955) is a Finnish linguist and a professor at the University of Helsinki. Lindstedt is a member of the Academy of Esperanto and was nominated as the Esperantist of the Year in 2000 (with Hans Bakker and Mauro La Torre ) by ...

, 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

Numbers of
textbook A textbook is a book containing a comprehensive compilation of content in a branch of study with the intention of explaining it. Textbooks are produced to meet the needs of educators, usually at educational institutions. Schoolbooks are textboo ...
s 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

s can access an international culture, including a large body of original as well as translated

literature Literature is any collection of written work, but it is also used more narrowly for writings specifically considered to be an art form, especially prose fiction, drama, and poetry. In recent centuries, the definition has expanded to include ...

. 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 pal Pen pals (or penpals, pen-pals, penfriends or pen friends) are people who regularly write to each other, particularly via postal mail. Pen pals are usually strangers whose relationship is based primarily, or even solely, on their exchange of le ...

s 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 A number of musical works are available in the Esperanto language. The phrase "Esperanto music" is sometimes used to include music which is about Esperanto. Classical music * Lou Harrison, who incorporated styles and instruments from many w ...

, 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 Lou Silver Harrison (May 14, 1917 – February 2, 2003) was an American composer, music critic, music theorist, painter, and creator of unique musical instruments. Harrison initially wrote in a dissonant, ultramodernist style similar to his form ...

, 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 SATB is an initialism that describes the scoring of compositions for choirs, and also choirs (or consorts) of instruments. The initials are for the voice types: S for soprano, A for alto, T for tenor and B for bass. Choral music Four-part harm ...

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.

s speak primarily in Esperanto at international Esperanto meetings. Esperanto proponents, such as Prof.

Humphrey Tonkin Humphrey R. Tonkin (born 2 December 1939) is professor of English, and served as the 4th president of the University of Hartford. He is also a dedicated Esperantist. Biography Born in Truro, UK, Tonkin is a dual citizen of the U.K. and the U.S ...

of the

University of Hartford The University of Hartford (UHart) is a private university in West Hartford, Connecticut. Its main campus extends into neighboring Hartford and Bloomfield. The university attracts students from 48 states and 43 countries. The university and it ...

, 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 William Auld (6 November 1924 – 11 September 2006) was a British poet, author, translator and magazine editor who wrote chiefly in Esperanto. Life Auld was born at Erith in Kent, and then moved to Glasgow with his parents, attending Alla ...

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 Eurocentrism (also Eurocentricity or Western-centrism) is a worldview that is centered on Western civilization or a biased view that favors it over non-Western civilizations. The exact scope of Eurocentrism varies from the entire Western world ...

, 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 The Quran (, ; Standard Arabic: , Classical Arabic, Quranic Arabic: , , 'the recitation'), also romanized Qur'an or Koran, is the central religious text of Islam, believed by Muslims to be a revelation in Islam, revelation from God in Islam, ...

into Esperanto) *

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 Kazimierz Bein (1872 – June 15, 1959), often referred to by his pseudonym Kabe, was a Polish ophthalmologist, the founder and sometime director of the Warsaw Ophthalmic Institute (''Warszawski Instytut Oftalmiczny''). He was also, for a ...

() *

Marjorie Boulton Marjorie Boulton (7 May 1924 – 30 August 2017) was a British author and poet writing in both English and Esperanto. Biography Marjorie Boulton studied English at Somerville College, Oxford where she was taught by C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tol ...

* 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 Jan Fethke (26 February 1903 – 16 December 1980) was a German- Polish film director and, under the pen name Jean Forge, a successful author. He also was a famous proponent of the language Esperanto. Life Born in Oppeln, Silesia, Jan Fethke ...

Antoni Grabowski Antoni Grabowski (11 June 1857 – 4 July 1921)Julius Glück, ''El la klasika periodo de Esperanto (Grabowski kaj Kabe)'', en Muusses Esperanto Biblioteko No. 5, Purmerend, 1937. p. 6. was a Polish chemical engineer, and an activist of the early ...

* Kalman Kalocsay *

Anna Löwenstein Anna Löwenstein (also spelt Lowenstein; born 1951) is a British Esperantist.Kenji Miyazawa was a Japanese novelist and poet of children's literature from Hanamaki, Iwate, in the late Taishō and early Shōwa periods. He was also known as an agricultural science teacher, a vegetarian, cellist, devout Buddhist, and utopian social acti ...

(translated his pre-existing works into Esperanto) *

Nikolai Nekrasov Nikolay Alexeyevich Nekrasov ( rus, Никола́й Алексе́евич Некра́сов, p=nʲɪkɐˈlaj ɐlʲɪkˈsʲejɪvʲɪtɕ nʲɪˈkrasəf, a=Ru-Nikolay_Alexeyevich_Nekrasov.ogg, – ) was a Russian poet, writer, critic and publi ...

* István Nemere *

* Edmond Privat *

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 Reto Rossetti (11 April 1909 – 20 September 1994) was a poet and an Esperantist professor. He was Italian-Swiss and retained his nationality, although he lived all his life in Britain. His professional career as a teacher in art colleges culmina ...

Raymond Schwartz Raymond Schwartz (8 April 1894 – 14 May 1973) was a French banker and Esperanto author who wrote many poems and novels in Esperanto, as well as skits which he directed for Parisian Esperanto cabarets. Biography Schwartz was born into a Frenc ...

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 Tivadar Soros ( eo, Teodoro Ŝvarc; born Theodor Schwartz; 7 April 1893 – 22 February 1968) was a Hungarian lawyer, author and editor. He is best known for being the father of billionaire George Soros, and engineer Paul Soros. He was born int ...

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 Þórbergur Þórðarson (''Thórbergur Thórdarson'') (Hali í Suðursveit, 12 March 1888/1889 – Reykjavík, 12 November 1974) was an Icelandic author and Esperantist. An ironist, satirist, volatile critic, and ground-breaking achiever in expe ...

Popular culture

In the futuristic novel ''

Lord of the World ''Lord of the World'' is a 1907 dystopian science fiction novel by Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson that centres upon the reign of the Antichrist and the end of the world. It has been called prophetic by Dale Ahlquist, Joseph Pearce, Pope Benedi ...

'' 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 ''War with the Newts'' (''Válka s Mloky'' in the original Czech), also translated as ''Salamander Wars'', is a 1936 satirical science fiction novel by Czech author Karel Čapek. It concerns the discovery in the Pacific of a sea-dwelling race, ...

'' 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 ''The Great Dictator'' is a 1940 American anti-war political satire black comedy film written, directed, produced, scored by, and starring British comedian Charlie Chaplin, following the tradition of many of his other films. Having been the onl ...

'' (1940) showed

Jewish ghetto In the Jewish diaspora, a Jewish quarter (also known as jewry, ''juiverie'', ''Judengasse'', Jewynstreet, Jewtown, or proto-ghetto) is the area of a city traditionally inhabited by Jews. Jewish quarters, like the Jewish ghettos in Europe, were ...

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 An incubus is a demon in male form in folklore that seeks to have sexual intercourse with sleeping women; the corresponding spirit in female form is called a succubus. In medieval Europe, union with an incubus was supposed by some to result in t ...

,'' 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 William Shatner (born March 22, 1931) is a Canadian actor. In a career spanning seven decades, he is best known for his portrayal of James T. Kirk in the ''Star Trek'' franchise, from his 1965 debut as the captain of the starship USS Enterpri ...

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 Filmoj is a Mexican-American film and television production company based in Sherman Oaks, California. It is owned by film director Alfonso Cuarón. The name was coined by Guillermo del Toro, who calls cinematography "the new Esperanto" ...

("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 Maurice may refer to: People *Saint Maurice (died 287), Roman legionary and Christian martyr *Maurice (emperor) or Flavius Mauricius Tiberius Augustus (539–602), Byzantine emperor *Maurice (bishop of London) (died 1107), Lord Chancellor and Lo ...

(mathematics),

John C. Wells John Christopher Wells (born 11 March 1939) is a British phonetician and Esperantist. Wells is a professor emeritus at University College London, where until his retirement in 2006 he held the departmental chair in phonetics. Career Wells ea ...

(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 Reinhard Justus Reginald Selten (; 5 October 1930 – 23 August 2016) was a German economist, who won the 1994 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (shared with John Harsanyi and John Nash). He is also well known for his work in bound ...

(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 ''Voyager 1'' is a space probe launched by NASA on September 5, 1977, as part of the Voyager program to study the outer Solar System and interstellar space beyond the Sun's heliosphere. Launched 16 days after its twin ''Voyager 2'', ''Voya ...

''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 ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' 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 Monero (; Abbreviation: XMR) is a decentralized cryptocurrency. It uses a public distributed ledger with privacy-enhancing technologies that obfuscate transactions to achieve anonymity and fungibility. Observers cannot decipher addresses tradi ...

, 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 The Committee for the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia (russian: Комитет освобождения народов России, ', abbreviated as russian: КОНР, ') was a committee composed of military and civilian Nazi collaborator ...

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

and

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, 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 An official language is a language given supreme status in a particular country, state, or other jurisdiction. Typically the term "official language" does not refer to the language used by a people or country, but by its government (e.g. judiciary, ...

of the

European Union The European Union (EU) is a supranational political and economic union of member states that are located primarily in Europe. The union has a total area of and an estimated total population of about 447million. The EU has often been des ...

. Grin's Report, published in 2005 by

François Grin François Grin (born 14 September 1959) is a Swiss economist. One of his research fields is the economics of language. Grin studied economics at the University of Geneva, where he obtained a doctorate summa cum laude in 1989. He then was a teache ...

, 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 Left-wing politics describes the range of political ideologies that support and seek to achieve social equality and egalitarianism, often in opposition to social hierarchy. Left-wing politics typically involve a concern for those in soci ...

currents exist in the wider Esperanto world, mostly organized through the

Sennacieca Asocio Tutmonda Sennacieca Asocio Tutmonda (SAT; en, World Anational Association) is an independent worldwide cultural Esperanto association of a general left-wing orientation. Its headquarters are in Paris. According to Jacques Schram, chairman of the Executi ...

founded by French theorist

Eugène Lanti Eugène Lanti was a pseudonym of Eugène Adam (19 July 1879 in Normandy, France – 17 January 1947 in Mexico). Lanti was an Esperanto, Esperantist, socialist and writer. He was a founder of Sennacieca Asocio Tutmonda, and a longtime editor of t ...

. Other notable Esperanto socialists include

and

. Both Nekrasov and Varankin were arrested during the Stalinist repressions 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 ''Chōseiden'' in Ayabe , also known as , is a religion founded in 1892 by Deguchi Nao (1836–1918), often categorised as a new Japanese religion originated from Shinto. The spiritual leaders of the movement have always been women within t ...

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

Baháʼí Faith

The

Baháʼí Faith The Baháʼí Faith is a religion founded in the 19th century that teaches the Baháʼí Faith and the unity of religion, essential worth of all religions and Baháʼí Faith and the unity of humanity, the unity of all people. Established by ...

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, 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.

Ehsan Yarshater Ehsan Yarshater ( fa, احسان يارشاطر, April 3, 1920 – September 1, 2018) was an Iranian historian and linguist who specialized in Iranology. He was the founder and director of The Center for Iranian Studies, and Hagop Kevorkian Profe ...

, the founding editor of ''

Encyclopædia Iranica ''Encyclopædia Iranica'' is a project whose goal is to create a comprehensive and authoritative English language encyclopedia about the history, culture, and civilization of Iranian peoples from prehistory to modern times. Scope The ''Encycl ...

'', notes how as a child in Iran he learned Esperanto and that when his mother was visiting Haifa on a

Baháʼí pilgrimage A Baháʼí pilgrimage currently consists of visiting the holy places in Haifa, Acre, Israel, Acre, and Mansion of Bahjí, Bahjí at the Baháʼí World Centre in Northwest Israel. Baháʼí Faith, Baháʼís do not have access to other places de ...

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 Baháʼí literature covers a variety of topics and forms, including scripture and inspiration, interpretation, history and biography, introduction and study materials, and apologia. Sometimes considerable overlap between these forms can be obser ...

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

, initially by Ismael Gomes Braga and

František Lorenz František Vladimír Lorenc (24 December 1872 – 24 May 1957), known in Portuguese as Francisco Valdomiro Lorenz, was a Czech-born polyglot and philosopher born in Zbyslav (nowadays part of the Czech Republic). He was one of the first Esperan ...

; 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 William Thomas Stead (5 July 184915 April 1912) was a British newspaper editor who, as a pioneer of investigative journalism, became a controversial figure of the Victorian era. Stead published a series of hugely influential campaigns whilst ed ...

, 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 The Bible (from Koine Greek , , 'the books') is a collection of religious texts or scriptures that are held to be sacred in Christianity, Judaism, Samaritanism, and many other religions. The Bible is an anthologya compilation of texts of a ...

into Esperanto was a translation of the

Tanakh The Hebrew Bible or Tanakh (;"Tanach"
''

. 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 The Remonstrants (or the Remonstrant Brotherhood) is a Protestant movement that had split from the Dutch Reformed Church in the early 17th century. The early Remonstrants supported Jacobus Arminius, and after his death, continued to maintain his ...

pastor Gerrit Berveling has translated the

Deuterocanonical The deuterocanonical books (from the Greek meaning "belonging to the second canon") are books and passages considered by the Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Oriental Orthodox Churches, and the Assyrian Church of the East to be ...

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

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 Tours ( , ) is one of the largest cities in the region of Centre-Val de Loire, France. It is the Prefectures in France, prefecture of the Departments of France, department of Indre-et-Loire. The Communes of France, commune of Tours had 136,463 ...

, France, published the first issue of ''Espero Katolika'' (Catholic Hope) in 1902''.'' A year after Peltier's death, the

International Union of Catholic Esperantists The International Union of Catholic Esperantists ( eo, Internacia Katolika Unuiĝo Esperantista, IKUE) is an organization of Catholic Esperanto speakers. It was founded in 1910 in Paris and is now headquartered in Rome. Activities IKUE organizes ...

(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 The German Catholics' Peace Association (Friedensbund Deutscher Katholiken) was a Catholic peace association founded in Weimar Germany in 1919 by Fr. Max Josef Metzger, a Roman Catholic priest. Metzger had served as military chaplain, in the Germa ...

in 1919, both of which used Esperanto as their working language. Two Roman Catholic popes,

John Paul II Pope John Paul II ( la, Ioannes Paulus II; it, Giovanni Paolo II; pl, Jan Paweł II; born Karol Józef Wojtyła ; 18 May 19202 April 2005) was the head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City State from 1978 until his ...

and

Benedict XVI Pope Benedict XVI ( la, Benedictus XVI; it, Benedetto XVI; german: link=no, Benedikt XVI.; born Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger, , on 16 April 1927) is a retired prelate of the Catholic church who served as the head of the Church and the sovereign ...

, 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 Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in ...

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, Edmond Privat and Montagu Christie Butler. * The first

Christadelphian The Christadelphians () or Christadelphianism are a restorationist and millenarian Christian group who hold a view of biblical unitarianism. There are approximately 50,000 Christadelphians in around 120 countries. The movement developed in the U ...

publications in Esperanto were published in 1910. *

Chick Publications Chick tracts are short evangelical gospel tracts, originally created by American publisher and religious cartoonist Jack Chick in the 1960s. His company Chick Publications has continued to print these tracts, in addition to those by new writer ...

, 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 The Book of Mormon is a religious text of the Latter Day Saint movement, which, according to Latter Day Saint theology, contains writings of ancient prophets who lived on the American continent from 600 BC to AD 421 and during an interlude date ...

has been partially translated into Esperanto, although the translation has not been officially endorsed by

the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, informally known as the LDS Church or Mormon Church, is a Nontrinitarianism, nontrinitarian Christianity, Christian church that considers itself to be the Restorationism, restoration of the ...

. There exists a group of Latter-day Saint Esperantists who distribute church literature in the language. * There are instances of

Christian apologists Christian apologetics ( grc, ἀπολογία, "verbal defense, speech in defense") is a branch of Christian theology that defends Christianity. Christian apologetics has taken many forms over the centuries, starting with Paul the Apostle in ...

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 The Quran (, ; Standard Arabic: , Quranic Arabic: , , 'the recitation'), also romanized Qur'an or Koran, is the central religious text of Islam, believed by Muslims to be a revelation from God. It is organized in 114 chapters (pl.: , sing. ...

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 Universal is the adjective for universe. Universal may also refer to: Companies * NBCUniversal, a media and entertainment company ** Universal Animation Studios, an American Animation studio, and a subsidiary of NBCUniversal ** Universal TV, a ...

, 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 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 Eurocentrism (also Eurocentricity or Western-centrism) is a worldview that is centered on Western civilization or a biased view that favors it over non-Western civilizations. The exact scope of Eurocentrism varies from the entire Western world ...

. This is most often noted in regard to the

, but applies equally to the

, and

, all of which are thoroughly

. The vocabulary, for example, draws about three-quarters from

, and the remainder primarily from

and

. The

was inspired by Romance, and the phonology and semantics by Slavic and Germanic languages. The

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, 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 National ...

, and

Sino-Tibetan Sino-Tibetan, also cited as Trans-Himalayan in a few sources, is a family of more than 400 languages, second only to Indo-European in number of native speakers. The vast majority of these are the 1.3 billion native speakers of Chinese languages. ...

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 A grammatical case is a category of nouns and noun modifiers (determiners, adjectives, participles, and Numeral (linguistics), numerals), which corresponds to one or more potential grammatical functions for a nominal group in a wording. In vari ...

adjectival agreement In linguistics, agreement or concord (abbreviated ) occurs when a word changes form depending on the other words to which it relates. It is an instance of inflection, and usually involves making the value of some grammatical category (such as gender ...

frequently complain about these aspects of Esperanto. In addition, in the past some people found the

Classical Greek Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic peri ...

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 Ido () is a constructed language derived from Reformed Esperanto, and similarly designed with the goal of being a universal second language for people of diverse backgrounds. To function as an effective ''international auxiliary language'', I ...

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 Hyperbaton , in its original meaning, is a figure of speech in which a phrase is made discontinuous by the insertion of other words.Andrew M. Devine, Laurence D. Stephens, ''Latin Word Order: Structured Meaning and Information'' (Oxford: Oxford Un ...

in poetry (as in Latin, cf. Virgil's

Eclogue An eclogue is a poem in a classical style on a pastoral subject. Poems in the genre are sometimes also called bucolics. Overview The form of the word ''eclogue'' in contemporary English developed from Middle English , which came from Latin , whi ...

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) sought to do away with these marks and the language

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

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge bec ...

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 Maria Wisława Anna SzymborskaVioletta Szostagazeta.pl, 9 February 2012. ostęp 2012-02-11 (; 2 July 1923 – 1 February 2012) was a Polish poet, essayist, translator, and recipient of the 1996 Nobel Prize in Literature. Born in Prowent (n ...

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 John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (, ; 3 January 1892 – 2 September 1973) was an English writer and philology, philologist. He was the author of the high fantasy works ''The Hobbit'' and ''The Lord of the Rings''. From 1925 to 1945, Tolkien was ...

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 in

Antarctica Antarctica () is Earth's southernmost and least-populated continent. Situated almost entirely south of the Antarctic Circle and surrounded by the Southern Ocean, it contains the geographic South Pole. Antarctica is the fifth-largest contine ...

, and the asteroids 1421 Esperanto and 1462 Zamenhof discovered by Finnish astronomer and Esperantist

Yrjö Väisälä Yrjö Väisälä (; 6 September 1891 – 21 July 1971) was a Finnish astronomer and physicist. His main contributions were in the field of optics. He was also active in geodetics, astronomy and optical metrology. He had an affectionate nick ...

Example text

Article 1 of the ''

Universal Declaration of Human Rights The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is an international document adopted by the United Nations General Assembly that enshrines the Human rights, rights and freedoms of all human beings. Drafted by a UN Drafting of the Universal De ...

'' 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

* * '' Esperanto Bookshelf'' at

Project Gutenberg Project Gutenberg (PG) is a Virtual volunteering, volunteer effort to digitize and archive cultural works, as well as to "encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks." It was founded in 1971 by American writer Michael S. Hart and is the ...

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