Esperanto: The Universal Language
Through the centuries, many have named language as the primary barrier to complete harmony among the world’s many nations. There are estimated to be between 3,000 and 8,000 different languages spoken around the world; certainly they can be considered as a great source of division among man. On top of the tremendous differences in morals, values, religions, politics and customs, people coming from different countries must also communicate and work around those divisions in separate languages. Surely a universal language would help ease some of that tension and push the world closer towards peace and unity. L.L. Zamenhof agreed with this so strongly that he created Esperanto, a language designed to be learned as a second language by everyone in the world. An international language.
- Esperanto was derived from many different languages with the purpose of making it as easy to learn and use as possible. The vocabulary is taken predominantly from the Romance languages. For example, the word esperanto means “one who hopes,” coming from the French and Spanish words for hope, esperer and esperar, respectively.
- The language typically has prepositions with an word order that goes subject-verb-object by default. Adjectives can be placed before or after the nouns that they modify, but most users place it before.
- New words are formed though expansive suffixes and prefixes.
- 28 letter alphabet as follows: a b c ĉ d e f g ĝ h ĥ i j ĵ k l m n o p r s ŝ t u ŭ v z every letter is pronounced normally except ‘c’ which has a -ts sound
- Every common noun end in -0, every adjective in -a, adverbs in -e and every verb in one of six tense suffixes
- Plural nouns end in -oj (sounds like oy), and adjectives agree with the noun if plural ending in -aj (sounds like ey)
As you can see, the grammatical rules and conjugation are very straight-forward and lack any special cases or exceptions that plague all other languages. The vocabulary is also extremely simple. L.L. Zamenof published 900 root words that can be expanded to thousands upon thouands of different words using prefixes, suffixes and compounding. There are almost no slang or idiomatic words in the Esperanto language as that would contradict the original goal of global comunication.
Modern Usage:
It is estimated that up to 2 million people currently speak Esperanto. It has not been declared the official language of any country, however:
- 1,000 have Esperanto as their native language
- 10,000 speak it fluently
- 100,000 can use it actively
- 1,000,000 understand a large amount passively
- 10,000,000 have studied it to some extent at some time.
Source: Wikipedia
So as of current day, Zamenhof’s dream of Esperanto being used as a universal second language has not been fulfilled. Most people have not even heard of the language, which is probably the reason you are reading this article in the first place. However, out of the several major attempts in creating a universal language, Esperanto is the only one with substantial modern user-base and the only one seriously studied in some educational institutions around the world. If there is some chance of the world adopting a universal language, Esperanto is definitely the best candidate.
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Anonymous said on 08.11.2009
Ehhhh… about esperanto being the best candidate for a universal language–there are some problems with that. First of all, esperanto as a second language would have to be instituted from the primary years of education, as English is in the majority of 1st world countries. I believe that it may be too useless and too late for the world to start adopting a language which has no real cultural value or importance in any society whether it be Italian, French, American, Chinese, Middle Eastern, etc.
Furthermore, the numbers and statistics above that show actual modern usage are not nearly big enough for the language to survive as a spoken language let alone be implemented as a universal language. In fact, that numbers listed above are akin to that of Native American languages which have been determined to become extinct in the coming decades by linguists.
Having said this, I still think Esperanto is a fascinating language and is really cool in studying romantic languages and even historical linguistics.
Jordan said on 08.11.2009
First off, thank you for the comment. Yes, if Esperanto was to be implemented as the universal language it would have to be taught during primary education, just like another other potential universal language. My argument was that if the world did someday decide to put in place a universal language, Esperanto would be the best candidate because of its grammatical simplicity, making it MUCH easier to learn than, say, English. Any language that would be adopted would have zero cultural value/importance in a great number of countries so I think simplicity should be the goal. That being said, I doubt a universal language will ever come to be. But hey, it’s pretty fun to think about.
- Jordan
Donnie said on 06.30.2010
If you want to learn Esperanto check out lernu.net. It is a great resource for learning and for socializing with Esperantists form around the world.
-Donnie
YoVo said on 08.28.2010
i think most native english speakers don’t realize how easy it is to learn english. no cases, no articles, few declinations, few tenses……it’s only the sometimes irregular spelling (tough, though, Slough) and the “th” that pose real problems for people ;-)