Esperanto

2008/9 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Languages

Esperanto
Flag:
Created by:	L. L. Zamenhof	1887
Setting and usage:	International auxiliary language
Total speakers:	Native: 200 to 2000 (1996, est.); Fluent speakers: est. 100,000 to 2 million
Category (purpose):	constructed language   International auxiliary language   Esperanto
Category (sources):	Vocabulary from Romance and Germanic languages; phonology from Slavic languages
Regulated by:	Akademio de Esperanto
Language codes
ISO 639-1:	eo
ISO 639-2:	epo
ISO 639-3:	epo
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.

Esperanto  is by far the most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language in the world. Its name derives from Doktoro Esperanto, the pseudonym under which L. L. Zamenhof published the first book detailing Esperanto, the Unua Libro, in 1887. The word esperanto means 'one who hopes' in the language itself. Zamenhof's goal was to create an easy and flexible language that would serve as a universal second language to foster peace and international understanding.

Esperanto has had continuous usage by a community estimated at between 100,000 and 2 million speakers for over a century. By most estimates, there are approximately one thousand native speakers. However, no country has adopted the language officially. Today, Esperanto is employed in world travel, correspondence, cultural exchange, conventions, literature, language instruction, television, and radio broadcasting. Also, there is an Esperanto Wikipedia that contains over 100,000 articles as of June 2008.

There is evidence that learning Esperanto may provide a good foundation for learning languages in general. Some state education systems offer basic instruction and elective courses in Esperanto. Esperanto is also the language of instruction in one university, the Akademio Internacia de la Sciencoj in San Marino.

History

Esperanto was developed in the late 1870s and early 1880s by ophthalmologist Dr. Ludovic Lazarus Zamenhof, an Ashkenazi Jew from Bialystok, now in Poland and previously in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, but at the time part of the Russian Empire.

After some ten years of development, which Zamenhof spent translating literature into the language as well as writing original prose and verse, the first book of Esperanto grammar was published in Warsaw in July 1887. The number of speakers grew rapidly over the next few decades, at first primarily in the Russian empire and Eastern Europe, then in Western Europe, the Americas, China, and Japan. In the early years, speakers of Esperanto kept in contact primarily through correspondence and periodicals, but in 1905 the first world congress of Esperanto speakers was held in Boulogne-sur-Mer, France. Since then world congresses have been held in different countries every year, except during the two World Wars. Since the Second World War, they have been attended by an average of over 2000 and up to 6000 people.

Relation to 20th-century totalitarianism

As a potential vehicle for international understanding, Esperanto attracted the suspicion of many totalitarian states. The situation was especially pronounced in Nazi Germany and in the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin.

In Germany, there was additional motivation to persecute Esperanto because Zamenhof was a Jew. In his work Mein Kampf, Hitler mentioned Esperanto as an example of a language that would be used by an International Jewish Conspiracy once they achieved world domination. Esperantists were executed during the Holocaust, with Zamenhof's family in particular singled out for execution.

In the early years of the Soviet Union, Esperanto was given a measure of government support, and an officially recognized Soviet Esperanto Association came into being. However, in 1937, Stalin reversed this policy. He denounced Esperanto as "the language of spies" and had Esperantists executed. The use of Esperanto remained illegal until 1956.

Official use

Esperanto has never been an official language of any recognized country. However, there were plans at the beginning of the 20th century to establish Neutral Moresnet as the world's first Esperanto state. In China, there was talk in some circles after the 1911 Xinhai Revolution about officially replacing Chinese with Esperanto as a means to dramatically bring the country into the twentieth century, though this policy proved untenable. In the summer of 1924, the American Radio Relay League adopted Esperanto as its official international auxiliary language, and hoped that the language would be used by radio amateurs in international communications, but its actual use for radio communications was negligible. In addition, the self-proclaimed artificial island micronation of Rose Island used Esperanto as its official language in 1968. Esperanto is the working language of several non-profit international organizations such as the Sennacieca Asocio Tutmonda, but most others are specifically Esperanto organizations. The largest of these, the World Esperanto Association, has an official consultative relationship with the United Nations and UNESCO. The U.S. Army has published military phrasebooks in Esperanto, to be used in wargames by mock enemy forces. Esperanto is also the first language of teaching and administration of the International Academy of Sciences San Marino, which is sometimes called an "Esperanto University".

Linguistic properties

Classification

As a constructed language, Esperanto is not genealogically related to any ethnic language. It has been described as "a language lexically predominantly Romanic, morphologically intensively agglutinative and to a certain degree isolating in character". The phonology, grammar, vocabulary, and semantics are based on the western Indo-European languages. The phonemic inventory is essentially Slavic, as is much of the semantics, while the vocabulary derives primarily from the Romance languages, with a lesser contribution from the Germanic languages. Pragmatics and other aspects of the language not specified by Zamenhof's original documents were influenced by the native languages of early speakers, primarily Russian, Polish, German, and French.

Typologically, Esperanto has prepositions and a pragmatic word order that by default is Subject Verb Object and Adjective Noun. New words are formed through extensive prefixing and suffixing.

Writing system

Esperanto is written with a modified version of the Latin alphabet, including six letters with diacritics: ĉ, ĝ, ĥ, ĵ, ŝ and ŭ (that is, c, g, h, j, s circumflex, and u breve). The alphabet does not include the letters q, w, x, or y except in unassimilated foreign names.

The 28-letter alphabet is:

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

All letters are pronounced approximately as in the IPA, with the exception of c and the accented letters:

Letter	c	ĉ	ĝ	ĥ	ĵ	ŝ	ŭ
Pronunciation	[ts]	[tʃ]	[dʒ]	[x]	[ʒ]	[ʃ]	[u̯] (as aŭ, eŭ)

Two ASCII-compatible writing conventions are in use. These substitute digraphs for the accented letters. The original "h-convention" (ch, gh, hh, jh, sh, u) is based on English 'ch' and 'sh', while a more recent " x-convention" (cx, gx, hx, jx, sx, ux) is useful for alphabetic word sorting on a computer (cx comes correctly after cu, sx after sv, etc.) as well as for simple conversion back into the standard orthography.

Another scheme represents the superscripted letters by a caret (^), as for example: c^ or ^c.

Phonology

(For help with the phonetic symbols, see Help:IPA)

Esperanto has 22 consonants, 5 vowels, and two semivowels, which combine with the vowels to form 6 diphthongs. (The consonant /j/ and semivowel /i̯/ are both written <j>.) Tone is not used to distinguish meanings of words. Stress is always on the penultimate vowel, unless a final vowel o is elided, a practice which occurs mostly in poetry. For example, familio "family" is stressed IPA:  [fa.mi.ˈli.o], but when found without the final o, famili’, the stress does not shift: [fa.mi.ˈli].

Consonants

The 22 consonants are:

	Bilabial		Labio- dental		Alveolar		Post- alveolar		Palatal		Velar		Glottal
Nasal	m				n
Plosive	p	b			t	d					k	g
Affricate					ts		tʃ	dʒ
Fricative			f	v	s	z	ʃ	ʒ			x		h
Trill					r
Approximant					l				j

The sound /r/ is usually rolled, but may be tapped [ɾ]. The /v/ has a normative pronunciation like an English v, but is sometimes somewhere between a v and a w, [ʋ], depending on the language background of the speaker. A semivowel /u̯/ normally occurs only in diphthongs after the vowels /a/ and /e/, not as a consonant */w/. Common, if debated, assimilation includes the pronunciation of /nk/ as [ŋk], as in English sink, and /kz/ as [gz], like the x in English example.

A large number of consonant clusters can occur, up to three in initial position and four in medial position, as in instrui "to teach". Final clusters are uncommon except in foreign names, poetic elision of final o, and a very few basic words such as cent "hundred" and post "after".

Vowels

Esperanto has the five cardinal vowels of Spanish, Swahili, and Modern Greek.

	Front	Back
Close	i	u
Mid	e	o
Open	a

There are six falling diphthongs: uj, oj, ej, aj, aŭ, eŭ (/ui̯, oi̯, ei̯, ai̯, au̯, eu̯/).

With only five vowels, a good deal of variation is tolerated. For instance, /e/ commonly ranges from [e] (French é) to [ɛ] (French è). The details often depend on the speaker's native language. A glottal stop may occur between adjacent vowels in some people's speech, especially when the two vowels are the same, as in heroo "hero" ([he.ˈro.o] or [he.ˈro.ʔo]) and praavo "great-grandfather" ([pra.ˈa.vo] or [pra.ˈʔa.vo]).

Grammar

Esperanto words are derived by stringing together prefixes, roots, and suffixes. This process is regular, so that people can create new words as they speak and be understood. Compound words are formed with a modifier-first, head-final order, the same order as English "birdsong" vs. "songbird".

The different parts of speech are marked by their own suffixes: all common nouns end in -o, all adjectives in -a, all derived adverbs in -e, and all verbs in one of six tense and mood suffixes, such as present tense -as.

Plural nouns end in -oj (pronounced "oy"), whereas direct objects end in -on. Plural direct objects end with the combination -ojn (pronounced to rhyme with "coin"): That is, -o for a noun, plus -j for plural, plus -n for direct object. Adjectives agree with their nouns; their endings are plural -aj (pronounced "eye"), direct-object -an, and plural direct-object -ajn (pronounced to rhyme with "fine").

Noun Subject Object Singular -o -on Plural -oj -ojn

Adjective Subject Object Singular -a -an Plural -aj -ajn

The suffix -n is used to indicate the goal of movement and a few other things, in addition to the direct object. See Esperanto grammar for details.

The six verb inflections consist of three tenses and three moods. They are present tense -as, future tense -os, past tense -is, infinitive mood -i, conditional mood -us, and jussive mood -u (used for wishes and commands). Verbs are not marked for person or number. For instance: kanti "to sing"; mi kantas "I sing"; mi kantis "I sang"; mi kantos "I will sing"; li kantas "he sings"; vi kantas "you sing".

Verbal Tense Suffix Present -as (kantas) Past -is (kantis) Future -os (kantos)

Verbal Mood Suffix Infinitive -i (kanti) Jussive -u (kantu) Conditional -us (kantus)

Word order is comparatively free: Adjectives may precede or follow nouns, and subjects, verbs and objects (marked by the suffix -n) may occur in any order. However, the article la "the" and demonstratives such as tiu "this, that" almost always come before the noun, and a preposition such as ĉe "at" must come before it. Similarly, the negative ne "not" and conjunctions such as kaj "both, and" and ke "that" must precede the phrase or clause they introduce. In copular (A = B) clauses, word order is just as important as it is in English clauses like "people are dogs" vs. "dogs are people".

Correlatives

A correlative is a word used to ask or answer a question of who, where, what, when, or how. Correlatives in Esperanto are set out in a systematic manner that correlates a basic idea (quantity, manner, time, etc.) to a function (questioning, indicating, negating, etc.)

Table of Correlatives		Question (Which)	Indication (This, that)	Indefinite (Some)	Universal (Each, every)	Negative (No)
		ki–	ti–	i–	ĉi–	neni–
Thing	–o	kio (what)	tio (this, that)	io (something)	ĉio (everything)	nenio (nothing)
Individual	–u	kiu (who, which one; which [horse])	tiu (that one; that [horse])	iu (someone; some [horse])	ĉiu (everyone; each [horse], all [horses])	neniu (no one; no [horse])
Association	–es	kies (whose)	ties (that one's)	ies (someone's)	ĉies (everyone's)	nenies (no one's)
Quality	–a	kia (what a)	tia (such a)	ia (some sort of)	ĉia (every kind of)	nenia (no kind of)
Place	–e	kie (where)	tie (there)	ie (somewhere)	ĉie (everywhere)	nenie (nowhere)
Manner	–el	kiel (how, as)	tiel (thus, as)	iel (somehow)	ĉiel (in every way)	neniel (no-how, in no way)
Reason	–al	kial (why)	tial (therefore)	ial (for some reason)	ĉial (for all reasons)	nenial (for no reason)
Time	–am	kiam (when)	tiam (then)	iam (sometime)	ĉiam (always)	neniam (never)
Amount	–om	kiom (how much)	tiom (that much)	iom (some, a bit)	ĉiom (all of it)	neniom (none)

Examples:

• Kio estas tio? "What is this?"
• Kioma estas la horo? "What time is it?" Note kioma rather than Kiu estas la horo? "which is the hour?", when asking for the ranking order of the hour on the clock.
• Io falis el la ŝranko "Something fell out of the cupboard."
• Homoj tiaj kiel mi ne konadas timon. "Men such as me know no fear."

Correlatives are declined if the case demands it:

• Vi devas elekti ian vorton pli simpla "You should choose a (some kind of) simpler word." Ia receives -n because it's part of the direct object.
• Kian libron vi volas? "What sort of book do you want?" Contrast this with, Kiun libron vi volas? "Which book do you want?"

Vocabulary

The core vocabulary of Esperanto was defined by Lingvo internacia, published by Zamenhof in 1887. It comprised 900 roots, which could be expanded into tens of thousands of words with prefixes, suffixes, and compounding. In 1894, Zamenhof published the first Esperanto dictionary, Universala Vortaro, with a larger set of roots. However, the rules of the language allowed speakers to borrow new roots as needed, recommending only that they look for the most international forms, and then derive related meanings from these.

Since then, many words have been borrowed, primarily but not solely from the Western European languages. Not all proposed borrowings catch on, but many do, especially technical and scientific terms. Terms for everyday use, on the other hand, are more likely to be derived from existing roots—for example komputilo (a computer) from komputi (to compute) plus the suffix -ilo (tool)—or to be covered by extending the meanings of existing words (for example muso (a mouse), as in English, now also means a computer input device). There are frequent debates among Esperanto speakers about whether a particular borrowing is justified or whether the need can be met by deriving from or extending the meaning of existing words.

In addition to the root words and the rules for combining them, a learner of Esperanto must memorize some idiomatic compounds that are not entirely straightforward. For example, eldoni, literally "to give out", is used for "to publish" (a calque of words in several European languages with the same derivation), and vortaro, literally "a collection of words", means "a glossary" or "a dictionary". Such forms are modeled after usage in some European languages, and speakers of other languages may find them illogical. Fossilized derivations inherited from Esperanto's source languages may be similarly obscure, such as the opaque connection the root word centralo "power station" has with centro "centre". Compounds with -um- are overtly arbitrary, and must be learned individually, as -um- has no defined meaning. It turns dekstren "to the right" into dekstrumen "clockwise", and komuna "common/shared" into komunumo "community", for example.

Nevertheless, there are not nearly as many idiomatic or slang words in Esperanto as in ethnic languages, as these tend to make international communication difficult, working against Esperanto's main goal.

Useful phrases

Here are some useful Esperanto phrases, with IPA transcriptions:

• Hello: Saluton /sa.ˈlu.ton/
• What is your name?: Kiel vi nomiĝas? /ˈki.el vi no.ˈmi.ʤas/
• My name is...: Mi nomiĝas... /mi no.ˈmi.ʤas/
• How much (is it/are they)?: Kiom (estas)? /ˈki.om ˈes.tas/
• Here you are: Jen /jen/
• Do you speak Esperanto?: Ĉu vi parolas Esperanton? /ˈʧu vi pa.ˈro.las es.pe.ˈran.ton/
• I do not understand you: Mi ne komprenas vin /mi ˈne kom.ˈpre.nas vin/
• I like this one: Ĉi tiu plaĉas al mi /ʧi ˈti.u ˈpla.ʧas al ˈmi/ or Mi ŝatas tiun ĉi /mi ˈʃa.tas ˈti.un ˈʧi/
• Thank you: Dankon /ˈdan.kon/
• You're welcome: Ne dankinde /ˈne dan.ˈkin.de/
• Please: Bonvolu /bon.ˈvo.lu/ or mi petas /mi ˈpe.tas/
• Here's to your health: Je via sano /je ˈvi.a ˈsa.no/
• Bless you!/Gesundheit!: Sanon! /ˈsa.non/
• Congratulations!: Gratulon! /ɡra.ˈtu.lon/
• Okay: Bone /ˈbo.ne/ or Ĝuste /ˈʤus.te/
• Yes: Jes /ˈjes/
• No: Ne /ˈne/
• It is a nice day: Estas bela tago /ˈes.tas ˈbe.la ˈta.ɡo/
• I love you: Mi amas vin /mi ˈa.mas vin/
• Goodbye: Ĝis (la) (revido) /ʤis la re.ˈvi.do/
• One beer, please: Unu bieron, mi petas. /ˈu.nu bi.ˈe.ron, mi ˈpe.tas/
• What is that?: Kio estas tio? /ˈki.o ˈes.tas ˈti.o/
• That is...: Tio estas... /ˈti.o ˈes.tas/
• How are you?: Kiel vi (fartas)? /ˈki.el vi ˈfar.tas/
• Good morning!: Bonan matenon! /ˈbo.nan ma.ˈte.non/
• Good evening!: Bonan vesperon! /ˈbo.nan ves.ˈpe.ron/
• Good night!: Bonan nokton! /ˈbo.nan ˈnok.ton/
• Peace!: Pacon! /ˈpa.tson/

Education

The majority of Esperanto speakers learn the language through self-directed study, online tutorials, and correspondence courses taught by volunteers. In more recent years, teaching websites like lernu! have become popular.

Esperanto instruction is occasionally available at schools, such as a pilot project involving four primary schools under the supervision of the University of Manchester, and by one count at 69 universities. However, outside of China and Hungary, these mostly involve informal arrangements rather than dedicated departments or state sponsorship. Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest had a department of Interlinguistics and Esperanto from 1966 to 2004, after which time instruction moved to vocational colleges; there are state examinations for Esperanto instructors.

Various educators have estimated that Esperanto can be learned in anywhere from one quarter to one twentieth the amount of time required for other languages. Some argue, however, that this is only true for native speakers of Western European languages. Claude Piron, a psychologist formerly at the University of Geneva and Chinese-English-Russian-Spanish translator for the United Nations, argued that Esperanto is far more "brain friendly" than many ethnic languages. "Esperanto relies entirely on innate reflexes [and] differs from all other languages in that you can always trust your natural tendency to generalize patterns. [...] The same neuropsychological law [— called by] Jean Piaget generalizing assimilation — applies to word formation as well as to grammar."

Language acquisition

Four primary schools in Britain, with some 230 pupils, are currently following a course in "propedeutic Esperanto", under the supervision of the University of Manchester. That is, instruction in Esperanto to raise language awareness and accelerate subsequent learning of foreign languages. Several studies demonstrate that studying Esperanto before another foreign language speeds and improves learning the second language to a greater extent than other languages which have been investigated. This appears to be because learning subsequent foreign languages is easier than learning one's first, while the use of a grammatically simple and culturally flexible auxiliary language like Esperanto lessens the first-language learning hurdle. In one study, a group of European secondary school students studied Esperanto for one year, then French for three years, and ended up with a significantly better command of French than a control group, who studied French for all four years. Similar results were found when the course of study was reduced to two years, of which six months was spent learning Esperanto. Results are not yet available from a study in Australia to see if similar benefits would occur for learning East Asian languages, but the pupils taking Esperanto did better and enjoyed the subject more than those taking other languages.

Community

Geography and demography

Esperanto speakers are more numerous in Europe and East Asia than in the Americas, Africa, and Oceania, and more numerous in urban than in rural areas. Esperanto is particularly prevalent in the northern and eastern countries of Europe; in China, Korea, Japan, and Iran within Asia; in Brazil, Argentina, and Mexico in the Americas; and in Togo in Africa.

Number of speakers

An estimate of the number of Esperanto speakers was made by the late Sidney S. Culbert, a retired psychology professor at the University of Washington and a longtime Esperantist, who tracked down and tested Esperanto speakers in sample areas in dozens of countries over a period of twenty years. Culbert concluded that between one and two million people speak Esperanto at Foreign Service Level 3, "professionally proficient" (able to communicate moderately complex ideas without hesitation, and to follow speeches, radio broadcasts, etc.). Culbert's estimate was not made for Esperanto alone, but formed part of his listing of estimates for all languages of over 1 million speakers, published annually in the World Almanac and Book of Facts. Culbert's most detailed account of his methodology is found in a 1989 letter to David Wolff . Since Culbert never published detailed intermediate results for particular countries and regions, it is difficult to independently gauge the accuracy of his results.

In the Almanac, his estimates for numbers of language speakers were rounded to the nearest million, thus the number for Esperanto speakers is shown as 2 million. This latter figure appears in Ethnologue. Assuming that this figure is accurate, that means that about 0.03% of the world's population speaks the language. This falls short of Zamenhof's goal of a universal language, but it represents a level of popularity unmatched by any other constructed language.

Marcus Sikosek (now Ziko van Dijk) has challenged this figure of 1.6 million as exaggerated. He estimated that even if Esperanto speakers were evenly distributed, assuming one million Esperanto speakers worldwide would lead one to expect about 180 in the city of Cologne. Van Dijk finds only 30 fluent speakers in that city, and similarly smaller than expected figures in several other places thought to have a larger-than-average concentration of Esperanto speakers. He also notes that there are a total of about 20,000 members of the various Esperanto organizations (other estimates are higher). Though there are undoubtedly many Esperanto speakers who are not members of any Esperanto organization, he thinks it unlikely that there are fifty times more speakers than organization members.

Finnish linguist Jouko Lindstedt, an expert on native-born Esperanto speakers, presented the following scheme to show the overall proportions of language capabilities within the Esperanto community:

• 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.

In the absence of Dr. Culbert's detailed sampling data, or any other census data, it is impossible to state the number of speakers with certainty. Few observers, probably, would challenge the following statement from the website of the World Esperanto Association:

Numbers of textbooks sold and membership of local societies put the number of people with some knowledge of the language in the hundreds of thousands and possibly millions.

Native speakers

Ethnologue reports estimates that there are 200 to 2000 native Esperanto speakers (denaskuloj), who have learned the language from birth from their Esperanto-speaking parents. This usually happens when Esperanto is the chief or only common language in an international family, but sometimes in a family of devoted Esperantists.

The most famous native speaker of Esperanto is businessman George Soros. Also notable is young Holocaust victim Petr Ginz, whose drawing of the planet Earth as viewed from the moon was carried aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia in 2003 ( STS-107).

Culture

Esperanto speakers can access an international culture, including a large body of original as well as translated literature. There are over 25,000 Esperanto books, both originals and translations, as well as several regularly distributed Esperanto magazines. Esperanto speakers use the language for free accommodations with Esperantists in 92 countries using the Pasporta Servo or to develop pen pal friendships abroad through the Esperanto Pen Pal Service.

Every year, 1,500-3,000 Esperanto speakers meet for the World Congress of Esperanto (Universala Kongreso de Esperanto). The European Esperanto Union (Eǔropa Esperanto-Unio) regroups the national Esperanto associations of the EU member states and holds congresses every two years. The most recent was in Maribor, Slovenia, in July-August 2007. It attracted 256 delegates from 28 countries, including 2 members of the European Parliament, Ms. Małgorzata Handzlik of Poland and Ms. Ljudmila Novak of Slovenia.

Historically, much Esperanto music has been in various folk traditions, such as Kaj Tiel Plu, for example. In recent decades, more rock and other modern genres have appeared, an example being the Swedish band Persone.

There are also shared traditions, such as Zamenhof Day, and shared behaviour patterns. Esperantists speak primarily in Esperanto at international Esperanto meetings.

Detractors of Esperanto occasionally criticize it as "having no culture". Proponents, such as Prof. Humphrey Tonkin of the University of Hartford, observe that Esperanto is "culturally neutral by design, as it was intended to be a facilitator between cultures, not to be the carrier of any one national culture." The late Scottish Esperanto author William Auld has written extensively on the subject, arguing that Esperanto is "the expression of a common human culture, unencumbered by national frontiers. Thus it is considered a culture on its own." Others point to Esperanto's potential for strengthening a common European identity, as it combines features of several European languages.

In popular culture

Esperanto has been used in a number of films and novels. Typically, this is done either to add the exotic flavour of a foreign language without representing any particular ethnicity, or to avoid going to the trouble of inventing a new language. The Charlie Chaplin film The Great Dictator (1940) showed Jewish ghetto shops designated in Esperanto, each with the general Esperanto suffix -ejo (meaning "place for..."), in order to convey the atmosphere of some 'foreign' East European country without referencing any particular East European language.

Two full-length feature films have been produced with dialogue entirely in Esperanto: Angoroj, in 1964, and Incubus, a 1965 B-movie horror film. Canadian actor William Shatner learned Esperanto to a limited level so that he could star in Incubus.

Other amateur productions have been made, such as a dramatisation of the novel Gerda Malaperis (Gerda Has Disappeared). A number of "mainstream" films in national languages have used Esperanto in some way, such as Gattaca (1997), in which Esperanto can be overheard on the public address system. In the 1994 film Street Fighter, Esperanto is the native language of the fictional country of Shadaloo, and in a barracks scene the soldiers of villain M. Bison sing a rousing Russian Army-style chorus, the "Bison Troopers Marching Song", in the language. Esperanto is also spoken and appears on signs in the film Blade: Trinity.

In the British comedy Red Dwarf, Arnold Rimmer is seen attempting to learn Esperanto in a number of early episodes, including Kryten. In the first season, signs on the titular spacecraft are in both English and Esperanto. Esperanto is used as the universal language in the far future of Harry Harrison's Stainless Steel Rat and Deathworld stories.

In a 1969 guest appearance on The Tonight Show, Jay Silverheels of The Lone Ranger fame appeared in character as Tonto for a comedy sketch with Johnny Carson, and claimed Esperanto skills as he sought new employment. The sketch ended with a statement of his ideal situation: "Tonto, to Toronto, for Esperanto, and pronto!"

Also, in the Danny Phantom Episode, "Public Enemies", Danny, Tucker, and Sam come across a ghost wolf who speaks Esperanto, but only Tucker can understand at first.

In Science

In 1921 the French Academy of Sciences recommended using Esperanto for international scientific communication. A few scientists and mathematicians, such as Maurice Fréchet (mathematics), John C. Wells (linguistics), Helmar Frank (pedagogy and cybernetics), and Nobel laureate Reinhard Selten (economics) have published part of their work in Esperanto. Frank and Selten were among the founders of the International Academy of Sciences in San Marino, sometimes called the "Esperanto University", where Esperanto is the primary language of teaching and administration.

Goals of the movement

Zamenhof's intention was to create an easy-to-learn language to foster international understanding. It was to serve as an international auxiliary language, that is, as a universal second language, not to replace ethnic languages. This goal was widely shared among Esperanto speakers in the early decades of the movement. Later, Esperanto speakers began to see the language and the culture that had grown up around it as ends in themselves, even if Esperanto is never adopted by the United Nations or other international organizations.

Those Esperanto speakers who want to see Esperanto adopted officially or on a large scale worldwide are commonly called finvenkistoj, from fina venko, meaning "final victory", or pracelistoj, from pracelo, meaning "original goal". Those who focus on the intrinsic value of the language are commonly called raŭmistoj, from Rauma, Finland, where a declaration on the near-term unlikelihood of the "fina venko" and the value of Esperanto culture was made at the International Youth Congress in 1980. These categories are, however, not mutually exclusive.

The Prague Manifesto (1996) presents the views of the mainstream of the Esperanto movement and of its main organisation, the World Esperanto Association ( UEA).

Symbols and flags

In 1893, C. Rjabinis and P. Deullin designed and manufactured a lapel pin for Esperantists to identify each other. The design was a circular pin with a white background and a five pointed green star. The theme of the design was the hope of the five continents being united by a common language.

The earliest flag, and the one most commonly used today, features a green five-pointed star against a white canton, upon a field of green. It was proposed to Zamenhof by Irishman Richard Geoghegan, author of the first Esperanto textbook for English speakers, in 1887. In 1905, delegates to the first conference of Esperantists at Boulogne-sur-Mer unanimously approved a version that differed from the modern flag only by the superimposition of an "E" over the green star. Other variants include that for Christian Esperantists, with a white Christian cross superimposed upon the green star, and that for Leftists, with the colour of the field changed from green to red.

In 1987, a second flag design was chosen in a contest organized by the UEA celebrating the first centennial of the language. It featured a white background with two stylised curved "E"s facing each other. Dubbed the "jubilea simbolo" ( jubilee symbol) , it attracted criticism from some Esperantists, who dubbed it the "melono" (melon) because of the design's elliptical shape. It is still in use, though to a lesser degree than the traditional symbol, known as the "verda stelo" (green star).

Religion

Esperanto has served an important role in several religions, such as Oomoto from Japan and Baha'i from Iran, and has been encouraged by others.

Oomoto

The Oomoto religion encourages the use of Esperanto among their followers and includes Zamenhof as one of its deified spirits.

Bahá'í Faith

The Bahá'í Faith encourages the use of an auxiliary international language. While endorsing no specific language, some Bahá'ís see Esperanto as having great potential in this role.

Lidja Zamenhof, the daughter of Esperanto founder L. L. Zamenhof, became a Bahá'í.

Various volumes of the Bahá'í literatures and other Baha'i books have been translated into Esperanto.

Spiritism

Esperanto is also actively promoted, at least in Brazil, by followers of Spiritism. The Brazilian Spiritist Federation publishes Esperanto coursebooks, translations of Spiritism's basic books, and encourages Spiritists to become Esperantists.

Bible translations

The first translation of the Bible into Esperanto was a translation of the Tanach or Old Testament done by L. L. Zamenhof. The translation was reviewed and compared with other languages' translations by a group of British clergy and scholars before publishing it at the British and Foreign Bible Society in 1910. In 1926 this was published along with a New Testament translation, in an edition commonly called the "Londona Biblio". In the 1960s, the Internacia Asocio de Bibliistoj kaj Orientalistoj tried to organize a new, ecumenical Esperanto Bible version. Since then, the Dutch Lutheran pastor Gerrit Berveling has translated the Deuterocanonical or apocryphal books in addition to new translations of the Gospels, some of the New Testament epistles, and some books of the Tanakh or Old Testament. These have been published in various separate booklets, or serialized in Dia Regno, but the Deuterocanonical books have appeared in recent editions of the Londona Biblio.

Christianity

Two Roman Catholic popes, John Paul II and Benedict XVI, have regularly used Esperanto in their multilingual urbi et orbi blessings at Easter and Christmas each year since Easter 1994. Christian Esperanto organizations include two that were formed early in the history of Esperanto, the International Union of Catholic Esperantists and the International Christian Esperantists League. An issue of "The Friend" describes the activities of the Quaker Esperanto Society. There are instances of Christian apologists and teachers who use Esperanto as a medium. Nigerian Pastor Bayo Afolaranmi's " Spirita nutraĵo" (spiritual food) Yahoo mailing list, for example, has hosted weekly messages since 2003. Chick Publications, publisher of Protestant fundamentalist themed evangelistic tracts, has published a number of comic book style tracts by Jack T. Chick translated into Esperanto, including "This Was Your Life!" ("Jen Via Tuto Vivo!")

Islam

Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran called on Muslims to learn Esperanto and praised its use as a medium for better understanding among peoples of different religious backgrounds. After he suggested that Esperanto replace English as an international lingua franca, it began to be used in the seminaries of Qom. An Esperanto translation of the Qur'an was published by the state shortly thereafter. In 1981, Khomeini and the Iranian government began to oppose Esperanto after realising that followers of the Bahá'í Faith were interested in it.

Criticism

Esperanto was conceived as a language of international communication, more precisely as a universal second language. Since publication, there has been debate over whether it is possible for Esperanto to attain this position, and whether it would be an improvement for international communication if it did. There have been a number of attempts to reform the language, the most well-known of which is the language Ido which resulted in a schism in the community at the time, beginning in 1907.

Since Esperanto is a planned language, there have been many, often passionate, criticisms of minor points which are too numerous to cover here, such as Zamenhof's choice of the word edzo over something like spozo for "husband, spouse", or his choice of the Classic Greek and Old Latin singular and plural endings -o, -oj, -a, -aj over their Medieval contractions -o, -i, -a, -e. (Both these changes were adopted by the Ido reform, though Ido dispensed with adjectival agreement altogether.) See the links below for examples of more general criticism. The more common points include:

• Esperanto has failed the expectations of its founder to become a universal second language. Although many promoters of Esperanto stress the few successes it has had, the fact remains that well over a century since its publication, the portion of the world that speaks Esperanto, and the number of primary and secondary schools which teach it, remain minuscule. It simply cannot compete with English in this regard.
• The vocabulary and grammar are based on major European languages, and are not universal. Often this criticism is specific to a few points such as adjectival agreement and the accusative case (generally such obvious details are all that reform projects suggest changing), but sometimes it is more general: Both the grammar and the 'international' vocabulary are difficult for many Asians, among others, and give an unfair advantage to speakers of European languages.
  One attempt to address this issue is Lojban, which draws from the six populous languages Arabic, Chinese, English, Hindi, Russian, and Spanish, and whose grammar is designed for computer parsing.
• The vocabulary, diacritic letters, and grammar are too dissimilar from the major Western European languages, and therefore Esperanto is not as easy as it could be for speakers of those languages to learn.
  Attempts to address this issue include the younger planned languages Ido and Interlingua.
• Esperanto phonology is unimaginatively provincial, being essentially Belorussian with regularized stress, leaving out only the nasal vowels, palatalized consonants, and /dz/. For example, Esperanto has phonemes such as /x/, /ʒ/, /ts/, /eu̯/ (ĥ, ĵ, c, eŭ) which are rare as distinct phonemes outside Europe. (Note that none of these are found in initial position in English.)
• Esperanto has no culture. Although it has a large international literature, Esperanto does not encapsulate a specific culture.
• Esperanto is culturally European. This is due to the European derivation of its vocabulary, and more insidiously, its semantics; both infuse the language with a European world view.
• The vocabulary is too large. Rather than deriving new words from existing roots, large numbers of new roots are adopted into the language by people who think they're international, when in fact they're only European. This makes the language much more difficult for non-Europeans than it needs to be.
• Esperanto is sexist. As in English, there is no neutral pronoun for s/he, and most kin terms and titles are masculine by default and only feminine when so specified.
  There have been many attempts to address this issue, of which one of the better known is Riism.
• Esperanto is, looks, or sounds artificial. This criticism is primarily due to the letters with circumflex diacritics, which some find odd or cumbersome, and to the lack of fluent speakers: Few Esperantists have spent much time with fluent, let alone native, speakers, and many learn Esperanto relatively late in life, and so speak haltingly, which can create a negative impression among non-speakers. Among fluent speakers, Esperanto sounds no more artificial than any other language. Others claim that an artificial language will necessarily be deficient, due to its very nature, but the Hungarian Academy of Sciences has found that Esperanto fulfills all the requirements of a living language.

Modifications

Though Esperanto itself has changed little since the publication of the Fundamento de Esperanto (Foundation of Esperanto), a number of reform projects have been proposed over the years, starting with Zamenhof's proposals in 1894 and Ido in 1907. Several later constructed languages, such as Fasile, were based on Esperanto.

In modern times, attempts have been made to eliminate perceived sexism in the language. One example of this is Riism. However, as Esperanto has become a living language, changes are as difficult to implement as in ethnic languages.