Esperanto is King of the Constructed Languages
March 16, 2017
With over 2 million speakers worldwide, Esperanto is the most widely spoken constructed language on the planet. Developed in 1887 by Polish-Jewish ophthalmologist L. L. Zamenhof, Esperanto was meant to be a unifying international language. Zamenhof created the language with 3 simple goals:
1. "To render the study of the language so easy as to make its acquisition mere play to the learner."
2. "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."
3. "To find some means of overcoming the natural indifference of mankind, and disposing them, in the quickest manner possible, and en masse, to learn and use the proposed language as a living one, and not only in last extremities, and with the key at hand."
Esperanto is so popular in fact, that the Esperanto Wikipedia is the largest in any constructed language. Popular language learning app Duolingo added Esperanto in May of 2015 and have had over 700,000 users sign up to learn the language. Esperanto has also been added to Google Translate.
But what exactly is Esperanto? It is an easy-to-learn blend of many popular European languages. Esperanto contains only 16 grammar rules, all nouns end with an "o," and there is no grammatical gender. On top of this all verbs are conjugated the same which only adds to the rapidity in which it is learned. In fact, many advocates of Esperanto see it as an alternative to learning English as a global language as it is far easier to learn.
Not only is Esperanto gaining popularity among speakers, it is also getting the interest of several nations. Though not the secondary official language of any recognized country, a few micronations have used it as their official language including Rose Island and the Republic of Molossia. In both Hungary and China, Esperanto has entered the education system. The Chinese government began using Esperanto for daily news on china.org.cn in 2001. Even the Vatican Radio now has an Esperanto version of its website.
Esperanto is definitely a fun and interesting language to learn. If you have plans to learn the languages of Europe, beginning with Esperanto can actually help as many of the words are similar and used by several other languages.
