When I tell people that I speak and study Esperanto, their reactions range from surprised to confused to skeptical. The ones who are surprised have little to no idea what Esperanto is supposed to be; those same people probably did not know that Esperanto existed in the first place. The confused wonder where I picked up the language, and some of them have even asked me what country speaks Esperanto as its native tongue. The skeptics have been the most fun to speak with – they wonder, sometimes condescendingly, why I would bother to study an invented language. So, my audience, if you fall into any of these three categories, mi permesu respondi, mi petas!
(mi = first-person pronoun; permesi = to permit; -u = imperative tense. Respondi = to respond, to answer. Mi petas = literally, “I beg,” but it is used in the same way we use the word “please.”)
-Esperanto, in its simplest sense, is an artificial language invented more than a century ago by L.L. Zamenhof. He designed the language to be a logical, easy-to-learn language that could function as a universal second language. Zamenhof did not intend for it to replace any given language; in fact, having a universal second language would allow a great many first-languages to thrive. If Esperanto reaches the worldwide status that Zamenhof envisioned, translation and communication among various people of different native languages would be simple enough so that less common languages would not need to fade away in order to streamline communication.
-Since it is an invented language, Esperanto has no country of origin. While Zamenhof himself came from Poland, Esperanto has no centralized location. Esperantists are scattered the world over. As such, you can learn Esperanto almost anywhere. With the advent of the Internet (and Transparent Language’s Esperanto offerings), learning Esperanto is easier than ever before!
-Studying Esperanto confers plenty of benefits. The study of any other language enhances your proficiency of your own language, since it reinforces grammatical concepts that we are not often taught throughout our educations. Esperanto shares similar linguistic roots as other languages, especially the latinate ones, so Esperanto makes a great gateway language into the study of more difficult languages.
In my opinion, Esperanto makes a phenomenal communication tool now that the Internet has taken such a dominant role in our daily lives. We are connected to people the world over – but how many people in the world actually speak the same language? Consider, for example, the enormous differences between English and Mandarin Chinese, two of the most prevalent language in the world today. They employ different grammars, different character sets, and are so highly evolved that they pose considerably difficulty to students who have not been immersed in either language. How could speakers of the two languages communicate easily online? Enter Esperanto! Since it is easy to learn, Esperanto would make a great intermediary language for Internet users.
