Esperanto - is this language used anywhere ?

Question

With English being most popular and universal is there any use for Esperanto.? Anybody knows about origin of this lanquage?

Answer 1

It is used worldwide.

We need an "International auxiliary language" like esperanto.

Why not english as the International Language? This seems a reasonable question, but

* English is by no means easy to master it is, generation after generation, the international language of a certain elite
* any nationally dominant language puts non-native speakers (in this case 90% of the world population) in an unfavourable position
* English - no matter how widespread still only reflects one specific type of culture, which may be upsetting to some
* in stress situations, one tends to lose ones ability to speak an irregular foreign language
* the above also applies to all other big languages as French, Spanish or Chinese.

"Esperanto is considerably easier to learn than national languages, since its design is far simpler and more regular. Also, unlike national languages, Esperanto allows communication on an equal footing between people, with neither having the usual cultural advantage favouring a native speaker.

Esperanto's purpose is not to replace any other language, but to supplement them: Esperanto would be used as a neutral language when speaking with someone who doesn't know one's own language. The use of Esperanto would also protect minority languages, which would have a better chance of survival than in a world dominated by a few powerful languages."

"Several research studies demonstrate that studying Esperanto before another foreign language speeds and improves learning the other language."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaedeutic_value_of_Esperanto

Answer 2

Esperanto is the most widely spoken constructed international language. The name derives from D-ro Esperanto (Dr. Hopeful), the pseudonym under which L. L. Zamenhof first published the language in 1887. Zamenhof's goal was to create an easy-to-learn and flexible language as a universal second language to foster international understanding.

Answer 3

Come on! english is NOT universal. It is just the current lingua franca. And in some time it'll leave the way to another one, just as French did in the past century. No language is universal.
See. If you think English is universal... there wouldn't be any use for any other language. And here we have with many major languages that simply won't give English the chance to finish them. Many many more languages are dying out because they have been in contact with a "stronger" language. If we could have an auxiliary language, a language leaned to interchange ideas with people who don't speak our native, those minority languages would have more oportunity to survive. That is one of the uses of Esperanto.

Answer 4

Esperanto really never caught on, although at one time there were a few thousand Esperanto speakers in the USA. There might still be a club here and there. Check on-line.

Too bad. It was a good idea to have an artificial, universal secondary language.

H

Answer 5

Use-
"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 and Madagascar in Africa.

"An estimate of the number of Esperanto speakers was made by Sidney S. Culbert, a retired psychology professor of the University of Washington and a longtime Esperantist, who tracked down and tested Esperanto speakers in sample areas of 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.) (Wolff 1996)."

Origin-
"Esperanto was developed in the late 1870s and early 1880s by Polish ophthalmologist Dr. Ludovic Lazarus Zamenhof. After some ten years of development, which Zamenhof spent translating literature into the language as well as writing original prose and verse, the first Esperanto grammar was published in Warsaw in July 1887."

I learned about this language in a college German class.... I think the guy who invented it was German...

Answer 6

don't know if it's being use still,but Esperanto is a configured language from spanish speakers of the ships that use to sail in the 15-17th cenruries.

it grows popular in many latin countries esp. Mejico Y brasil,but is mostly now a forgotten language

le despidido

Answer 7

The only use for Esperanto is among language dorks with too much time on their hands.

In other words, people like me! :-D

Answer 8

here you go boo!
wikipedia in esperanto