Questions below are based on the following passage: For those of you not in the know in the world of invented languages, Esperanto was created in the late 1800s by a Mr. Ludwik Zamenhof of Poland. Zamenhof bemoaned the tension created by the literal inability of we humans to understand each other. In Esperanto he sought to provide a sort of neutral universal second language that privileged no one linguistically, confining us all only by our ability to be articulate, rather than by our familiarity with whatever language happens to be spoken at a given time." While not the worldwide form of... Show more

Questions below are based on the following passage:

For those of you not in the know in the world of invented languages, Esperanto was created in the late 1800s by a Mr. Ludwik Zamenhof of Poland. Zamenhof bemoaned the tension created by the literal inability of we humans to understand each other. In Esperanto he sought to provide a sort of neutral universal second language that privileged no one linguistically, confining us all only by our ability to be articulate, rather than by our familiarity with whatever language happens to be spoken at a given time."
While not the worldwide form of communication Zamenhof and other Esperantists have hoped for, Esperanto has grown impressively since its inception. Estimates of numbers of speakers range from 100,000 to 2 million, in 115 different countries; native speakers are estimated to number more than 1000. Many books have been translated and written in Esperanto, and two movies have been made in Esperanto—including Incubus starring William Shatner.

Reasons to Learn Esperanto:
It’s Easy. A common argument for learning Esperanto is the ease of learning it: it’s phonetic, grammatically regular, and a relatively small amount of words can be combined to create additional words—so you need to know less vocabulary to sound smart than you would in other languages. In addition to being able to be learned many times more quickly than anything else, studies show that learning Esperanto increases people’s ability to learn a next language.

You Can Stay in People’s Houses for Free. Some of these Esperanto speakers really put their money where their mouths are when it comes to supporting international understanding. There’s a list Esperantists can put themselves on called the Pasporta Serva; speak Esperanto and, bang, you can stay with any of those fellow speakers for free. The list currently has around 1350 hosts in more than 85 countries. Does any other language come with that kind of perk?

I am Esperanto. A final reason to pin a green 5-pointed star (symbol of Esperanto) to your shirt and try and learn this crazy human-made language is to support the ideals that motivated Zamenhof to create the thing in the first place. He wanted to help usher in peace among cultures by giving people a place to be on equal footing, at least linguistically. In this time of tensions and divisions between pretty much every group you can find, that seems like a goal worth sharing. So, go ahead and call yourself Esperanto—it means, in Esperanto, “one who hopes."

Show less