Join now

Esperanto

Views
1231

When it was created, Esperanto was intended to become everyone's second language, to bring equality to international communications. Lazar Zamenhof created the language in Protected content , in response to the ethnic divisions in his native Bialystok in Poland. He believed that language barriers fostered conflict and therefore set about promoting a "neutral" second language that had no political baggage. In the Protected content there were attempts at the League of Nations to make it the language of international relations, but the French were among those to resist. And Esperanto speakers were persecuted in Nazi Germany, where Hitler viewed the language with deep suspicion.

There are estimated to be more than 2,000 Esperanto speakers in the UK and anything between 500,000 and two million worldwide.
The Esperanto speakers believe it is a language that not only sounds beautiful, but exists to create harmony in the world, making this the perfect choice. Others say it is a language awareness course that uses Esperanto as a tool to create interest in language and confidence in language learning.

The language itself sounds rather like Italian or Spanish and its grammar is very simple so it's easy to learn, with no irregular verbs. As an international language, Esperanto's main drawback is its similarity to European languages.

Does it still have sense to learn it or even speak it ? Can it still been seen as a neutral language to speak to people as it is so much more like European than Japanese or Arabic ?

World Forum

Our Global Partners