Have you ever heard of theAndhopeful? It's about a planned languagedeveloped by the Polish doctor Ludvik Zamenhof who, in 1887, published the first book on Esperanto grammar under the pseudonym of Doctor Esperantofrom which the name derives, meaning “he who hopes“. Esperanto has been proposed and discussed as common language of the European Union, in order to lower the costs of translating the organization's official documents, but it was never officially adopted. Zamenhof's vision of Esperanto was that of one universal language thanks to which different peoples could dialogue, which could be learned quickly and combined with their mother tongue. He created it using predominantly Indo-European linguistic roots and one extremely simplified and logical grammar.
How Esperanto works: some examples
Esperanto provides a flexible syntaxone simple grammar it's a vocabulary mainly derived from Romance and Germanic languages, with Slavic influences. The language is agglutinative, characterized that is by the union of several morphemes (letters or union of letters that have their own meaning) which determine its meaning. Each letter always has the same sound and each sound is written only one way. This structure makes it particularly easy to learn, as there are few exceptions and irregular rules.
Let's do some examples Of words in Esperanto for daily use:
- saluton! = hello
- This is a reviewer! = goodbye!
- bonan tagon/vesperon/nokton = good morning/good evening/good night
- dankon = thank you
- Bonan apetiton! = bon appetit!
- sorry min = sorry.
In Esperanto, all nouns end in -ORthe adjectives in -TO and the adverbs in -ANDTherefore: rapid-or (the speed), rapid-to (fast), rapid-And (quickly).
In fact, it seems that at least the 500 most frequent words/roots can be formed 2000 words, which form a perfect basis for communication. Testimonies report that after 2/3 weeks, people already start to practice the language, that they even manage to teach it after 6 months/a year, and that it is also such a simple language to learn, that it is possible to start studying it even in adulthood and from self-taught.
Where Esperanto is studied: the World Esperanto Association
The largest association of Esperanto speakers is theWorld Esperanto Association (UEA)born in 1908 based in Rotterdamwhich many national associations belong to, and represents the Esperanto community, for example in international organizations such as UNESCO.
Esperanto culture is also very active in all the arts, from poetry to literature, to theater and music, and thanks to its simple and unambiguous logic, it lends itself to being used in computer science, in the branch of computational linguistics . Esperanto in Poland and Croatia has been declared an intangible cultural heritage and is the subject of study in various universities in Europe, the USA and China. In Italy today the Esperantists registered with the Fei (Federation of Italian Esperantists) would be around two thousand, while it seems that in the world there are around 2-3 million people who speak this language more or less fluently.
The ideals of the movement are summarized in Boulogne Declaration and the Prague Manifestoin which the emphasis is placed on neutrality of the movement with respect to any type of organization or current. In fact, an Esperantist is simply defined as someone who learns the language, regardless of its uses, sharing of ideals or adherence to the movement.
What happened to Esperanto: why it is not used
If the conditions for the use of this language by the entire world community seem to be all there, why then has it never been officially adopted by any country and few people know of its existence? One of the main obstacles to the adoption of Esperanto has been the lack of political and institutional support. The language has faced numerous challenges over the years, including opposition from totalitarian regimes who viewed it as one political threat.
Despite proposals to use Esperanto as a lingua franca in the European Parliament, so far theEuropean Union justifies the multilingual policy which provides for the use of the 24 official languages for reasons of transparency, fueling criticism from those who suspect that this policy is actually leading towards the use of English alone, whose growing dominance has limited the practical need for a 'planned alternative like Esperanto. Critics also argue that, despite its apparent neutrality, Esperanto is Eurocentric in its structure and lexicon, which may limit its appeal in non-European contexts.
