Welcome to the first of many Random Language Adventures! They’re dives into lesser spoken or niche languages that have quite the interesting background and history! Today we’ll be taking a look at: Esperanto!
I’m sure you’ve heard this name thrown around before, but what is it? This is the question we’re going to answer in the first post of Random Language Overview. (Esperanto learning resources at the end!!)
Esperanto is a conlang, constructed language. It was made by Ludwik Lejzer Zamenhof, a linguist and ophthalmologist białystok (Russian Empire at the time, currently in Poland). But why did he make Esperanto, and why is it important?
Zamenhof created Esperanto because he wanted a universal second language, so that people could easily communicate between countries. He wanted a language for humanity to use, not for a single country. The name Esperanto was originally his pseudonym, (“Doktoro Esperanto”, “the doctor who hopes”) but the community went on to use this name for the language itself
“The internal idea of Esperanto is: the foundation of a neutral language will help break down barriers between peoples and help people get used to the idea that each one of them should see their neighbors only as a human being and a brother.”
L. L. Zamenhof
Esperanto wasn’t always accepted since its creation, as it was repressed in Portugal and Germany, the teaching of it was banned in France, and esperantists were killed in the Soviet Union
But what’s the language actually like? Well, it’s very easy! There are no irregularities, each part of speech uses specific suffixes so they’re easy to recognise. You can also “make new words” by attaching a prefix or a suffix to an existing root!
Its alphabet is also very easy to learn, as the only new characters are Ĉ, Ĝ, Ĥ, Ĵ, Ŝ and Ŭ, and there’s one-to-one sound correspondence (each letter only makes one sound, and each sound can only be represented by that letter)
Its vocabulary comes mostly from Romance languages and Germanic languages, with some Slavic roots added into it.
Overall it’s a very interesting language to learn, so if you’re now interested in learning it, here are some resources for you!
Some websites:
https://www.duolingo.com/enroll/eo/en/Learn-Esperanto
Some YouTube channels:
An app:
http://www.kurso.com.br/index.php?en
Some books:
http://www.amazon.com/Esperanto-Teach-Yourself-Revised-Edition/dp/0844237639
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