When I first heard of Esperanto I didn’t believe it. With all of the actual languages that exist in the world, why would someone create a new one that was not native to any particular country? Surely, someone was pulling my leg. Upon learning more of the impetus for this new language’s creation, I’ve come to believe that it was a noble, if somewhat impractical, idea.
The Birth of a Neutral Language
If you were raised in a town whose population was divided among four groups of people who spoke four different languages, you’d probably learn one of the languages very well, while gaining a passive understanding of the other three. But this was not the experience of Esperanto’s creator, L. L. Zamenhof. In a letter to a friend, he explained the reasoning behind the conception of his new language.
“In Bialystok the inhabitants were divided into four distinct elements: Russians, Poles, Germans and Jews; each of these spoke their own language and looked on all the others as enemies.”
His first book on the subject was published in 1887. Since then, Esperanto has been adopted at various levels by people in many parts of the world. It has never risen to the level of official adoption as a native language by any country, but it has had an interesting history of both adoption and banishment.
The Language of Spies
In an ironic twist, a language created to unify peoples was seen as a threat by totalitarian nations, namely: Germany, Spain, and the Soviet Union under Hitler, Franco, and Stalin. Dubbed, “The language of Spies” by Stalin, Esperantists (people who spoke Esperanto) were persecuted under each of those regimes. Surprisingly, Italy under Mussolini did not take this negative view of Esperanto, due to its similarity to Italian. Despite the intensity of the early 20-th century persecution of people who spoke this language, Esperanto has survived.
Current Usage of Esperanto
Its relative simplicity is one reason why the language has continued to exist – despite not being officially adopted by any country. It’s estimated that one can learn to use Esperanto in 10% of the time that it would take to learn English (150 hours vs. 1,500 hours). Similarly disparities of the time investment to learn how to communicate in Esperanto exists with other major languages, like German and Italian.
With the high end of the estimated number of Esperanto speakers worldwide listed at two million, the language is clearly in use 126 years after its conception. It can currently be classified as a niche language with a small but devoted following, as illustrated by the popularity of websites like lernu, where free, self-directed study of Esperanto is offered to its 15,000 monthly visitors.