This short article is a very brief introduction to the language of Esperanto. I am a passionate speaker of Esperanto, and somewhat active in the movement to spread the use and awareness of the language. I do, indeed, hope that this article will inspire your further interest in the language, and, have placed personal arguments and opinions throughout the article, albeit clearly stated when I have done so. As a result, this article is at least partly biased by my opinion, and you should take the appropriate caution when reading it. You have my assurance that, throughout the writing of this article, I have made a conscious effort to present no unfounded opinions or misinformation, but, as with any opiniated source of information, you should be critical of it and be sure to not simply accept whatever is said as an ultimate, undebated truth.

The name of this blog is written in Esperanto, a language which I intend to use to write articles alongside articles, such as these, which are written in English. I feel as though this may serve as a fitting example of Esperanto’s purpose; to serve as a language to aid international communication, not to dominate it. Esperanto was created by Ludwig Zamenhof, a Polish Opthalmologist, during the final decades of the 19th Century, with the ‘Unua Libro’, the first book to detail the language being published in 1887. Zamenhof, inspired by his childhood experiences and observations of ethnic and cultural divisions, created the language to reduce the “time and labour in learning foreign tongues” in order to allow people to communicate with a more diverse variety of people, fostering a spirit of international unity and dispelling misunderstanding and prejudice.

The name ‘Esperanto’ translates to ‘One who hopes’, a poetic reflection of the language’s optimistic ideals. Initially, however, the language was actually known as simply ‘La Internacia Lingvo’, which translates to ‘The International Language’; the name of ‘Esperanto’ was adopted by its original speakers from Zamenhof’s pseudonym of ‘Dr. Esperanto’. In the decades following the publication of the ‘Unua Libro’, the number of speakers of Esperanto grew rapidly and now the language is estimated to have over 2,000,000 speakers. Some people make the criticism that all speakers of Esperanto are ideological radicals, but I make the personal argument that such a criticism is an overly broad generalisation for such a large body of speakers.

You may have not needed my translation of the original name of the language. This is likely because the language appears somewhat familiar to you; the vocabulary and grammar of Esperanto has been formed from those of Latin, Romance and Germanic languages, all three of which have also deeply influenced English. This familiarity makes Esperanto easier to learn for speakers of almost every widespread European language, but this is, in my opinion, not amongst the strongest of its advantages. Esperanto is more easily and rapidly learned than any of the World’s major languages as the result of its simplified grammar and vocabulary. There are no exceptions to the pronunciations or grammatical rules of the language, and the vocabulary is built upon a root system; in example, there is no unique word for ‘Toy’, but, instead, the word is created from the combination of ‘Ludi’, meaning ‘to play’, ‘il’, a suffix denotating a tool, and ‘o’, which indicates that the word is a singular noun, forming the word, ‘Ludilo’. In addition, Word-order is made flexible by the use of the accusative, ‘-n’. ‘Mi amas vin’, ‘Vin mi amas’, ‘Vin amas mi’, ‘Amas mi vin’, and ‘Amas vin mi’ are all sentences with an identical meaning, ‘I love you’, with the accusative clarifying that ‘vin’, ‘you’, are the object of the sentence.

The Esperanto movement and community sometimes refers to itself as ‘Esperantujo’, literally translating to ‘Container of those who hope’, although it is better interpreted as ‘Land’ or ‘Nation’, as opposed to ‘Container’. Members of the movement engage in cultural activities, such as writing, singing, and participating in meetings of various scales. As a result, many, including myself, would claim that the Esperantujo has developed its own unique, international culture, which is further enhanced by the history of both the language and the movement; the history of the movement is interesting, but unfortunately beyond the scope of this article, so I will place some resources regarding it in the ‘Sources and Resources’ section. Although I was personally drawn to Esperanto for its goal of becoming an international auxiliary language, I became passionate for it after feeling a sense of connectedness and wonder as a result of my exposure to the culture, language, politics and traditions of other countries; this exposure was provided simply through communication and the watching and reading of media within the Esperanto community. I never felt as if Esperanto or Esperantujo intended to damage or replace the various cultures of the World, but, rather, that it intended to provide a medium to better explore and understand it. Although these are only my personal experiences, I doubt whether anyone would challenge the notion that the ability to speak a language, which, according to the Ethnologue, is spoken in at least 115 countries, could provide experience of cultures outside of one’s own. The Community is very much aware and supportive of its ability to facilitate international understanding; each year, the ‘Universala Esperanto-Asocio’, which has an official consultative relationship with the ‘United Nations’, organises an international congress, where speakers of Esperanto gather and interact via the medium of Esperanto. The most attended of these congresses, which have, with the exception of the years of the two World Wars, continued uninterrupted since 1905, within the last five years was the 2015 congress in Lille, France, which had 2698 attendees from at least 80 different nations; larger congresses have occurred in the past, but I wanted to give a more accurate depiction of the Esperanto Community within recent years. In addition, the ‘World Esperanto Youth Organisation’, otherwise known as the ‘Tutmonda Esperantista Junularo Organizo’, organises a hospitality service, known as ‘Pasporta Servo’, which facilitates the organisation of hosting and lodging between speakers of Esperanto via a ‘gift-economy’; neither guest nor host have any obligation to pay or recompense the other, although the service does encourage that they communicate via Esperanto.

Due to its simplicity, Esperanto can be learned at a greater rate than other languages; a study found that, while it took students 2000 hours to become fluent in German, 1500 hours to become fluent in English, and 1000 hours to become fluent in Spanish, a student needs only 150 hours to become fluent in Esperanto. This has led some educators to consider using Esperanto as an introduction to learning foreign languages. As a result, Esperanto has been frequently researched and used for its propaedeutic value. In Australia, a three year study involving three schools determined that Esperanto provided children with more enjoyment and was found by them to be easier to learn as opposed to other languages. This study was referred to as the ‘EKPAROLI’ project and its authors concluded that Esperanto was the best introduction for children to ‘LOTE’s (Languages other than English) when compared with the other languages used in the study, such as German, Indonesian and Japanese. Other studies have been performed and I have provided a list of them in the ‘Sources and Resources’ section; unfortunately, I have had some issues with the citation of these studies and the verification of their claims, so, in order to avoid spreading potential misinformation, I have refrained from including them in the main portion of this article.

You have my gratitude for reading this article, the first of this blog. I hope that you may be inspired to learn more about Esperanto, as well as its goals, community and history. If you are interested in learning Esperanto, I have placed some resources in the ‘Sources and Resources’ section in order to help you to do so. Personally, I think that having an international auxiliary language would allow for an increased amount of international exposure, reducing the ‘Us and Them’ mentality that can sometimes desensitise us to the emotions and lives of people that we have no frequent contact with, but, as I hope that I have demonstrated, albeit briefly, there are many other reasons and benefits regarding the learning of Esperanto. Any criticisms or feedback regarding this article would be greatly appreciated and beneficial to me. More articles, hopefully of a gradually increasing quality, will be posted on this blog over time, regarding a variety of themes and subjects.

Sources and Resources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto The Wikipedia page regarding Esperanto.

https://www.ethnologue.com/language/epo The Ethnologue Database’s entry on Esperanto.

http://www.genekeyes.com/Dr_Esperanto.html The ‘Unua Libro’, providing Zamenhof’s motives for creating the language alongside a somewhat outdated introduction to its grammar and vocabulary.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Esperanto A brief summary of the History of Esperanto.

https://lernu.net/en/biblioteko/103/1 A short book, written in Esperanto, regarding the history of the language and its community.

https://uea.org/gk/586 The Statistics of the attendees of the 2015 international congress.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Esperanto_Congress Information regarding the International Congress and past congresses.

https://www.ladocumentationfrancaise.fr/var/storage/rapports-publics/054000678.pdf Arguably the most popularly cited study, which reached the conclusion that Esperanto can be learned in less time than other European Languages.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaedeutic_value_of_Esperanto A list of studies regarding the propaedeutic value of Esperanto.

http://web.archive.org/web/20031204061223/http://www.education.monash.edu.au/projects/esperanto/Ekrep97.htm The EKPAROLI Project.

https://lernu.net/en/kurso/nakamura and https://www.duolingo.com/course/eo/en/Learn-Esperanto-Online These two courses provide a complete understanding of the Grammar of Esperanto, as well as enough vocabulary to enable ‘everday’ conversation.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmkhn3JfgRGeLfRMVa9yUvQ ‘Evildea’ is the most popular Esperanto channel on ‘YouTube’; I have included it as to provide a potential resource for learning, but also to provide exposure to the pronunciation and spoken-use of the language.

https://www.101languages.net/esperanto/criticism.html , https://www.mezzoguild.com/esperanto/ and http://miresperanto.com/konkurentoj/not_my_favourite.htm Some criticisms of Esperanto.

https://www.pasportaservo.org/ Pasporta Servo.

