Today is Esperanto Day. Here are 10 things you might not know about Esperanto.
Esperanto is a constructed language created by Ludwik Lejzer Zamenhof. He was born in 1859 in Bialystok, a multi-ethnic city that is in present-day Poland. Growing up there, he witnessed many arguments between people who spoke different languages. This gave him the idea of creating an entirely new language that was simple to learn, to bring people together. He eventually gave up his career as an eye doctor to concentrate on Esperanto, and became known as Doktoro Esperanto (Dr. Esperanto).
At first, he thought about reviving Latin as a universal language, but concluded that it was too complicated.
It was initially known as “International Language” but the early speakers began referring to it as Esperanto in 1889. “Esperanto” translates to “one who hopes.”
Today is Esperanto Day because it was on this date in 1887 that Zamenhof published the first book of Esperanto grammar.
Esperanto uses root words from the romance languages. It has one definitive article and no indefinite articles. Nouns have no gender, and verbs are all regular with only one form per tense. The Esperanto alphabet has 28 letters and is based on the Latin alphabet. It doesn’t include Q, w, X and Y, and adds ĉ, ĝ, ĥ, ĵ, ŝ, and ŭ.
The World Esperanto Association has a membership of 120 countries, but no country has adopted it as an official language. A small territory called Neutral Moresnet, between what is today Belgium and Germany, proposed to adopt it, but the first world war got in the way. Esperantujo ("Esperanto-land") is the name given to the collection of places where it is spoken.
Esperanto has a Flag. It 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.
There are about 2 million speakers worldwide with about a thousand who were taught it from birth by their parents. It’s most popular in Europe, Asia and South America but there are speakers on other continents, too. In Africa, Togo has the most speakers.
Esperanto was added to Google Translate as its 64th language on February 22, 2012. Duolingo has an Esperanto course, and over 1 million people have started it. Esperanto Wikipedia (Vikipedio) is the 36th-largest Wikipedia by number of articles (359,000)
William Auld is a writer whose literary work in Esperanto has received three nominations for the Nobel Prize in Literature, in 1999, 2004, and 2006.