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Esperanto

Esperanto is probably the most famous of all languages “constructed” by humans as well as the one with the greatest number of speakers.

How was Esperanto created?

The inventor of this language, Ludwik Lejzer Zamenhof, an ophtalmologist, grew up in Bialystok, city nowadays located in Poland, but which then belonged to Russia. Four important communities lived there, but not necessarily harmoniously: the Jewish, Polish German and Byelorussian communities. Zamenhof had the idea of a neutral international language that would be easy to learn (grammar and very regular spelling), in order to encourage the communication between communities speaking different languages. He published in 1887 the first grammar of this language under the name of “Doktoro Esperanto,” “the doctor who hopes.” It is this very name which is now used to designate the language.

The first congress on Esperanto took place in France, in Boulogne-sur-Mer, in 1905. Nowadays, dozens of meetings take place every year. Original literature and translated works can be found in Esperanto, as well as newspapers, magazines, CDs, radio programs and thousands of websites.

Where is Esperanto spoken?

The point of Esperanto is to be a language that is not tied to any particular territory or population. Therefore, one can find speakers of Esperanto across the globe.

Total Number of Speakers (estimates)

The estimates concerning the actual number of speakers of Esperanto vary a lot, going from 100 000 speakers to 10 000 000. Since most speakers learnt it as a second language, it is difficult to assess the total number of fluent speakers. Ethnologue.com states that there are 2 000 000 people speaking Esperanto as a second language.

There are native speakers of Esperanto (often children of Esperanto couples), the number of which reaches approximately one thousand, according to the linguist Jouko Lindstedt. Most of them are bilingual or multilingual.

What languages does Esperanto resemble?

As it is a “constructed language,” Esperanto does not belong to any language group. Nonetheless, many of its roots come from Indo-European languages (Latin, Germanic and Slavonic). Phonetically, it often appears to be similar to Latin languages. Morphologically, however, it is close to agglutinating languages such as Japanese or Turkish, and insulating languages such as Mandarin.

To find out more :

Some websites:

Some books (in French) :

  • Claude Piron, “Le défi des langues – Du gâchis au bon sens”, (Paris : L’Harmattan, 1994 ; ISBN : 2-7384-2432-5)
  • René CENTASSI et Henri MASSON, “L’homme qui a défié Babel,”1995, Ramsay, Paris. ISBN 2-84114-114-4

Thanks to all the esperanto speakers and esperantists who helped us to write this page. In particular Marion Belisle and Henri Masson.

 
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