Unua Libro, self-published in Warsaw on 26 July 1887 under a hopeful pseudonym (1887)
The author called his creation simply 'the international language', la lingvo internacia
General knowledge · Words & language
Esperanto
1887
Constructed languages — the international auxiliary language
The most successful invented language, published in Warsaw in 1887 by L. L. Zamenhof, a Jewish ophthalmologist from Białystok who signed himself "Doktoro Esperanto", meaning "one who hopes". Designed to be learned quickly and to belong to nobody, it has a wholly regular grammar in which nouns end in -o, adjectives in -a, adverbs in -e, the plural adds -j and the direct object adds -n. Estimates of speakers vary wildly, from about 100,000 to two million, and it is the only constructed language with a community of native speakers.
How to spot them
- ▸A language invented by a Polish eye doctor to defuse the language quarrels of his home town
- ▸Nouns in -o, adjectives in -a, plurals in -j, accusative in -n; no irregular verbs
- ▸A green flag with a white canton and a green five-pointed star
- ▸Speakers called Esperantistoj; native speakers called denaskuloj; 'Esperantujo' for the community
Key facts
The Fundamento of 1905, declared untouchable so the language could not fragment (1905)
It fixes sixteen rules of grammar, an alphabet and a core vocabulary
The first World Congress, at Boulogne-sur-Mer in 1905 (1905)
It has been held annually ever since, and gave the movement the Akademio as its guardian
The green star flag and the anthem 'La Espero'
Both adopted by the movement in its first decades; the star's five points stand for the continents
Six accented letters — ĉ, ĝ, ĥ, ĵ, ŝ and ŭ — that a reform of 1907 threw out (1907)
The breakaway language Ido returned to the plain Latin alphabet
In 1937 Stalin had its speakers purged as 'an international spy organization' (1937)
Hitler had already denounced the language in Mein Kampf
Its word for computer, komputilo, is built from a verb plus the suffix for 'tool'
The same suffix gives tranĉilo (knife) from tranĉi (to cut)
Key ideas
- Absolute regularity: one sound per letter, one ending per part of speech, no exceptions and no irregular verbs.
- A small root vocabulary — 917 roots in the first book — expanded by prefixes, suffixes and compounding into tens of thousands of words.
- Neutrality: because it is nobody's mother tongue, no nation gains an advantage in using it.
Quick-fire facts
- •Created by Ludwik Lejzer Zamenhof (1859–1917), an ophthalmologist born in Białystok, then in the Russian Empire
- •The name comes from his pseudonym Doktoro Esperanto, 'Doctor Hopeful' — esperanto means 'one who hopes'
- •Unua Libro ('First Book') appeared on 26 July 1887 and listed 917 roots
- •The Fundamento de Esperanto (1905) is the language's unalterable foundation, with its sixteen grammatical rules
- •The first World Esperanto Congress met at Boulogne-sur-Mer in 1905; the Akademio de Esperanto followed, modelled on the Académie française
- •It largely displaced Volapük, the earlier auxiliary language invented by Johann Martin Schleyer
- •Ido, a reformed offshoot, split from the movement in 1907
- •It is the only constructed language with native speakers, known as denaskuloj, usually estimated in the low thousands
- •No country has ever adopted it officially, though it has been taught on Duolingo and has its own Wikipedia
- •Zamenhof asked people to pledge to learn it once ten million others had promised; he received about a thousand replies
Drill it — 9 cards
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Sources
- Universal Esperanto Association — Universala Esperanto-Asocio — about the language
- Arika Okrent — In the Land of Invented Languages