Believe it or not, Esperanto has produced an ancillary language! Much in the same way that Latin evolved into Spanish, French, Italian, and Portuguese, so too has Esperanto spawned a similar language. The offspring language is called “Ido.” And, appropriately enough, the Esperanto word “ido” means “offspring.” (It’s also a suffix that denotes offspring, such as “bovido” for calf.)

I have not studied much of Ido, but from what I know of it, the language was designed to remove some of the more difficult elements of Esperanto. Admittedly, I didn’t even think there were difficult elements! Anyhow, Ido abolishes the enclitic (that little pointed symbol expressed as sx, cx, etc.) in favor of the more Latinate ch and sh. Ido changes verb endings some, so that infinitives end in -r, and also have present-, past-, and future-tense forms. To some extent, adjective agreement has also been discarded.

Since Ido is supposed to be even easier to learn than Esperanto, it might be worth a look. If you have any Esperanto under your belt, you could probably pick up Ido in under an hour! I suppose it’s a decent attempt to improve upon Esperanto, but in my opinion it’s rather unnecessary. Ido doesn’t do anything new, per se, since a language can only express so much, and have so many different tenses. Perhaps I’m too much of a purist? Regardless, take a look at Ido sometime, if only to have a look at a schismatic point in Esperanto’s history.