Esperanto

Esperanto is the constructed auxiliary language with the largest number of speakers worldwide. It was devised by L. L. Zamenhof in 1887, originally called "the International Language." The language is meant to serve as a neutral second tongue for global communication, allowing people to connect across linguistic divides without creating hierarchies, while honoring cultural and linguistic variety. Zamenhof published the language in a work titled *Dr. Esperanto's International Language*, using the pen name "Esperanto," meaning "one who hopes." Early users liked that name so much that they adopted it for the language itself.

Among constructed languages, Esperanto sits between naturalistic ones, which imitate existing languages, and a priori ones, whose features are invented from scratch. Its vocabulary, syntax, and semantics come mostly from Indo-European languages. About 80% of its vocabulary is derived from Romance languages, with additional elements from Germanic, Greek, and Slavic tongues. A key feature is its system of derivation: prefixes and suffixes can be freely attached to roots to form new words, allowing effective communication with a relatively small core vocabulary.

Esperanto is the most successful constructed international auxiliary language and the only one with a notable number of native speakers—estimated at around 2,000. Speakers are often called Esperantists. Estimates of total users vary, but two sources put the figure near 100,000. The highest concentrations of speakers are in Europe, East Asia, and South America. No country has made Esperanto an official language, but the term "Esperantujo" (Esperanto land) refers to the global community of places where it is spoken. The language has a presence online, including on Wikipedia, Amikumu, Google Translate, and Duolingo.

Esperanto largely replaced Volapük in the 19th and 20th centuries as the leading international auxiliary language. Many former Volapükists switched to Esperanto because of its simpler structure. Over the years, various reforms have been proposed, including an official 1894 proposal by Zamenhof, gender reforms, and offshoot languages called Esperantidos.

**History**

**Background** Before Esperanto, Johann Martin Schleyer (1831–1912) had the idea of creating a neutral universal second language for humanity, which he realized as Volapük. His movement proved there was real demand for such a language in the 19th century, gaining widespread active use. However, the Volapük movement collapsed internally, leading to its gradual replacement by Esperanto. Many Volapük speakers joined the Esperanto movement, which was linguistically simpler and lacked central control; numerous former Volapük clubs became Esperanto clubs. Volapük’s influence thus gave the early Esperanto movement a major boost, setting the stage for constructed languages to be widely used, even as Volapük itself declined sharply.

**Creation** Esperanto was developed in the late 1870s and early 1880s by L. L. Zamenhof, a Jewish ophthalmologist from Białystok, then part of the Russian Empire (now Poland). After several earlier versions (Proto-Esperanto), he self-published the first grammar book on 26 July 1887 under the pseudonym "Esperanto" ("one who hopes"), calling the language simply "the international language." Early speakers liked the name Esperanto and began using it for the language itself.

Zamenhof aimed to create an easy, flexible language that could serve as a universal second tongue, promoting world peace and international understanding, and building a community of speakers. He wrote that he wanted humanity to "learn and use en masse the proposed language as a living one." His goal was not only for Esperanto to become an international auxiliary language but also 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." In a letter to Nikolai Borovko, he described his feelings and the situation in Białystok. Because people were reluctant to learn a new language that few spoke, Zamenhof asked them to sign a promise to start learning once ten million people had made the same pledge. He was disappointed to receive only about a thousand responses. Nonetheless, the number of speakers grew quickly over the following decades, first in the Russian Empire and Central Europe, then in other parts of Europe, the Americas, China, and Japan.

In 1905, Zamenhof published the *Fundamento de Esperanto* as a definitive guide. Later that year, French Esperantists organized the first World Esperanto Congress in Boulogne-sur-Mer, France, with his participation—an annual event that continues today. Zamenhof also proposed that an independent body of linguistic scholars should oversee the language’s future evolution, which led to the founding of the *Akademio de Esperanto*, partly modeled after the Académie française.

**20th century** After the First World War, the Esperanto movement continued to grow.