109-542: The Esperanto Misplaced Pages ( Esperanto : Vikipedio en Esperanto , IPA [vikipeˈdio en espeˈɾanto] or Esperanta Vikipedio [espeˈɾanta vikipeˈdio] ) is the Esperanto version of Misplaced Pages , which was started on 11 May 2001, alongside the Basque Misplaced Pages . With over 361,000 articles as of November 2024, it is the 37th- largest Misplaced Pages as measured by the number of articles, and
218-444: A genitive case ending in -es . Therefore, the adjectival correlatives, ending in -ia and -iu , do not play that role, as adjectival personal pronouns such as mia ("my") do. However, adjectival correlatives do agree in number and case with the nouns they modify, as any other adjectives: La ĉevaloj, kiujn mi vidis (The horses which I saw). They, as well as the independent determiners ending in -io , also take
327-481: A "community of speakers". His original title for the language was simply "the international language" ( la lingvo internacia ), but early speakers grew fond of the name Esperanto, and began to use it as the name for the language just two years after its creation. The name quickly gained prominence, and has been used as an official name ever since. In 1905, Zamenhof published the Fundamento de Esperanto as
436-604: A Collaboration of the Week ( kunlaboraĵo de la semajno ) which improves neglected articles and an Article of the Week featuring good-quality articles on the front page. The Esperanto community is a frequent contributor to the Meta project, Translation of the week . According to the List of Wikipedias by sample of articles at Meta, a list based on List of articles every Misplaced Pages should have , Esperanto ranks 36th, lacking almost none of
545-476: A Jewish ophthalmologist from Białystok , then part of the Russian Empire , but now part of Poland . According to Zamenhof, he created the language to reduce the "time and labor we spend in learning foreign tongues", and to foster harmony between people from different countries: "Were there but an international language, all translations would be made into it alone ... and all nations would be united in
654-426: A basic understanding of Esperanto. The language-learning platforms Drops , Memrise and LingQ also have materials for Esperanto. On February 22, 2012, Google Translate added Esperanto as its 64th language. On July 25, 2016, Yandex Translate added Esperanto as a language. With about 361,000 articles, Esperanto Misplaced Pages (Vikipedio) is the 36th-largest Misplaced Pages, as measured by the number of articles, and
763-526: A certain degree isolating in character". Approximately 80% of Esperanto's vocabulary is derived from Romance languages. Typologically , Esperanto has prepositions and a pragmatic word order that by default is subject–verb–object (SVO). Adjectives can be freely placed before or after the nouns they modify, though placing them before the noun is more common. New words are formed through extensive use of affixes and compounds . Esperanto's phonology , grammar , vocabulary , and semantics are based on
872-477: A common brotherhood." His feelings and the situation in Białystok may be gleaned from an extract from his letter to Nikolai Borovko: The place where I was born and spent my childhood gave direction to all my future struggles. In Białystok 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. In such
981-549: A definitive guide to the language. Later that year, French Esperantists organized with his participation the first World Esperanto Congress , an ongoing annual conference, in Boulogne-sur-Mer , France. Zamenhof also proposed to the first congress that an independent body of linguistic scholars should steward the future evolution of Esperanto, foreshadowing the founding of the Akademio de Esperanto (in part modeled after
1090-473: A different scope. For example, instead of malbona (bad) we may see aĉa (of poor quality) or fia (shameful), but these are not strict antonyms. The antonymic prefix is highly productive among native-speaking children . Proper names may either be The last method is usually used only for names or transliterations of names in Latin script . As noted under Gender , feminine personal names may take
1199-575: A double function, as interrogative and relative pronouns and adverbs, just as the wh- words do in English: Kiu ĉevalo? (Which horse?); La ĉevalo, kiu forkuris (The horse that ran away). The adjectival determiners ending in -u have the usual dual function of adjectives: standing alone as proforms, as in ĉiu (everyone); and modifying a noun, as in ĉiu tago (every day). Those ending in -io are exclusively used standing alone: ĉio (everything). The correlatives have
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#17327799588911308-441: A few dorożkas with their horses squeezed in between. Such a sight it was. Later a few blocks were changed from Dzika Street to Dr. Zamenhofa Street and a nice monument was erected there with his name and his invention inscribed on it, to honor his memory. Zamenhof's goal was to create an easy and flexible language that would serve as a universal second language , to foster world peace and international understanding, and to build
1417-704: A language that could be used by an international Jewish conspiracy once they achieved world domination. Esperantists were killed during the Holocaust , with Zamenhof's family in particular singled out to be killed. The efforts of a minority of German Esperantists to expel their Jewish colleagues and overtly align themselves with the Reich were futile, and Esperanto was legally forbidden in 1935. Esperantists in German concentration camps did, however, teach Esperanto to fellow prisoners, telling guards they were teaching Italian,
1526-501: A larger set of root words, adding 1740 new words. The rules of the Esperanto language allow speakers to borrow words as needed, recommending only that they look for the most international words, and that they borrow one basic word and derive others from it, rather than borrowing many words with related meanings. Since then, many words have been borrowed from other languages, primarily those of Western Europe. In recent decades, most of
1635-452: A more fully assimilated Johano and Johanino , or Jozefo "Joseph" and Jozefino "Josephine". Some writers extend this -a convention to all female names, though there is no such gender in Esperanto grammar. Esperanto personal pronouns distinguish gender in the third-person singular: li (he), ŝi (she); but not in the plural: ili (they). There are two practical epicene third-person singular pronouns: expanding
1744-503: A particular borrowing is justified, or whether the need can be met by derivation or extending the meaning of existing words. Esperanto occupies a middle ground between "naturalistic" constructed languages such as Interlingua , which take words en masse from their source languages with little internal derivation, and a priori conlangs such as Solresol , in which the words have no historical connection to other languages. In Esperanto, root words are borrowed and retain much of
1853-577: A smaller set of words. Esperanto is the most successful constructed international auxiliary language, and the only such language with a sizeable population of native speakers , of which there are perhaps several thousand. Usage estimates are difficult, but two estimates put the number of people who know how to speak Esperanto at around 100,000. Concentration of speakers is highest in Europe, East Asia, and South America. Although no country has adopted Esperanto officially, Esperantujo ("Esperanto-land")
1962-476: A town a sensitive nature feels more acutely than elsewhere the misery caused by language division and sees at every step that the diversity of languages is the first, or at least the most influential, basis for the separation of the human family into groups of enemies. I was brought up as an idealist; I was taught that all people were brothers, while outside in the street at every step I felt that there were no people, only Russians, Poles, Germans, Jews, and so on. This
2071-489: A very few basic words such as cent "hundred" and post "after". Esperanto vocabulary The original word base of Esperanto contained around 900 root words and was defined in Unua Libro ("First Book"), published by L. L. Zamenhof in 1887. In 1894, Zamenhof published the first Esperanto dictionary, Universala vortaro ("International Dictionary"), which was written in five languages and supplied
2180-463: A word is fixed by the grammar. Only a few cannot be used independently and so correspond to how a typical affix behaves in English. When a root receives more than one affix, their order matters, because affixes modify the entire stem they are attached to. That is, the outer ones modify the inner ones. Most affixes are themselves roots, and as such have an inherent part of speech. This is indicated by
2289-411: A word is gendered because of social custom or because of the word itself. A small (and decreasing ) number of noun roots, mostly titles and kinship terms, are inherently masculine unless the feminine suffix -ino or the inclusive prefix ge- are added. For example, there are patro (father), patrino (mother), and gepatroj (parents), whereas there is no proper word for parent in
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#17327799588912398-475: Is a combination of two factors: the great ease and familiarity of using the mal- prefix, and the relative obscurity of most of the alternatives, which would hamper communication. This results in English borrowings – such as ĉipa (cheap) for malmultekosta (inexpensive) – failing to find favor even among native English speakers. Two root antonyms are frequently encountered: eta (little), and dura (hard [not soft]). However, their popularity
2507-758: Is also Education@Internet, which has developed from an Esperanto organization; most others are specifically Esperanto organizations. The largest of these, the Universal Esperanto Association , has an official consultative relationship with the United Nations and UNESCO , which recognized Esperanto as a medium for international understanding in 1954. The Universal Esperanto Association collaborated in 2017 with UNESCO to deliver an Esperanto translation of its magazine UNESCO Courier ( Esperanto : Unesko Kuriero en Esperanto ). The World Health Organization offers an Esperanto version of
2616-477: Is covered in the article on Esperanto grammar . What follows is a list of what are usually called "affixes". Most of them, however, are actually lexical roots, in that they can be used as independent words and their relative order in a compound is determined by semantics, not grammar. They are called "affixes" mainly because they derive from affixes in Esperanto's source languages. Some are true affixes in that, although they may be used independently, their order within
2725-433: Is due to their iconicity . Eta is derived from the diminutive suffix and more properly means slight , but it's a short word, and its use for malgranda (little) is quite common. The reason for the popularity of dura may be similar: perhaps official malmola , with the repeated continuants m_l , sounds too soft to mean "hard", while dura begins with a stop consonant . Other antonymic words tend to have
2834-401: Is even aliĝilo (registration form), from the preposition al (to) and the suffixes -iĝ- (to become) and -ilo (an instrument). Compound words in Esperanto are similar to English, in that the final root is basic to the meaning. The roots may be joined together directly, or with an epenthetic (linking) vowel to aid pronunciation. This epenthetic vowel is most commonly
2943-411: Is not used when an antonym exists in the basic vocabulary: suda (south), not "malnorda" from 'north'; manki (to be lacking, intr.), not "malesti" from 'to be'. The creation of new words through the use of grammatical (i.e. inflectional) suffixes, such as nura (mere) from nur (only), tiama (contemporary) from tiam (then), or vido (sight) from vidi (to see),
3052-409: Is quite common for prepositions to be used as prefixes: alveni (to arrive), from al (to) and veni (come); senespera (hopeless), from sen (without) and espero (hope); pripensi (to consider), from pri (about) and pensi (to think); vendi pogrande (sell wholesale), from po (at the rate of) and grande (large [quantity]), etc. There
3161-457: Is similarly ambiguous. More recently, the word maskla (masculine) was created as an unambiguous alternative, while others use the unofficial suffix -iĉo . There are several dozen feminine roots that do not normally take the feminine suffix -ino : Like the essentially masculine roots (those that do not take the feminine suffix), feminine roots are rarely interpreted as epicene. However, many of them are feminine because of social custom or
3270-664: Is still variation in many of the above words, depending on the social expectations and language background of the speaker. Many of the words are not clearly either masculine or epicene today. For example, the plural bovoj is generally understood to mean "cattle", not "bulls", and similarly the plurals angloj (Englishpeople) and komencantoj (beginners); but a masculine meaning reappears in bovo kaj bovino "a bull & cow", anglo kaj anglino (an Englishman & Englishwoman), komencanto kaj komencantino (a male & female beginner). There are several dozen clearly masculine roots: Some of these, such as masklo and
3379-465: Is the communicative equivalent of ten words in English. However, a contrary tendency is apparent in cultured and Greco-Latin technical vocabulary, which most Europeans see as "international" and therefore take into Esperanto en masse , despite the fact they are not truly universal. Many Asians consider this to be an onerous and unnecessary burden on the memory, when it is so easy to derive equivalent words internally (for example by calquing them, which
Esperanto Misplaced Pages - Misplaced Pages Continue
3488-575: Is the largest Misplaced Pages in a constructed language. About 150,000 users consult the Vikipedio regularly, as attested by Misplaced Pages's automatically aggregated log-in data, which showed that in October 2019 the website has 117,366 unique individual visitors per month, plus 33,572 who view the site on a mobile device instead. Esperanto has been described as "a language lexically predominantly Romanic , morphologically intensively agglutinative , and to
3597-519: Is the most widely spoken constructed language in the world. Although no country has adopted Esperanto officially, Esperantujo ("Esperanto-land") is the name given to the collection of places where it is spoken. Esperanto is the working language of several non-profit international organizations such as the Sennacieca Asocio Tutmonda , a left-wing cultural association which had 724 members in over 85 countries in 2006. There
3706-449: Is the world's most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language . Created by L. L. Zamenhof in 1887, it is intended to be a universal second language for international communication, or "the international language" ( la Lingvo Internacia ). Zamenhof first described the language in Dr. Esperanto's International Language (Esperanto: Unua Libro ), which he published under
3815-405: Is used as a name for the collection of places where it is spoken. The language has also gained a noticeable presence on the internet, as it became increasingly accessible on platforms such as Duolingo , Misplaced Pages , Amikumu and Google Translate . Esperanto speakers are often called "Esperantists" ( Esperantistoj ). Esperanto was created in the late 1870s and early 1880s by L. L. Zamenhof ,
3924-517: Is used for asking time: Kioma horo estas? , literally "How-manyeth hour is it?"] Although the initial and final elements of the correlatives are not roots or affixes, in that they cannot normally be independently combined with other words (for instance, there is no genitive case in -es for nouns), the initial element of the neni- correlatives is an exception, as seen in neniulo (a nobody), from neni- plus -ulo , or neniigi , to nullify or destroy, from neni- plus
4033-680: Is what Chinese often does). This sparks frequent debates as to whether a particular root is justified, and sometimes results in duplicates of native and borrowed vocabulary. An example is "calligraphy", which occurs both as a calqued belskribo ("writing of beauty") and as the direct borrowing kaligrafio . A similar development has also occurred in English ( brotherly vs. fraternal ), German ( Ornithologie vs. Vogelkunde for ornithology ), Japanese ( beesubooru vs. yakyuu for baseball ), Spanish ( básquetbol vs. baloncesto for basketball ), French ( le week-end vs. la fin de semaine ), and other languages. However, although
4142-596: The Académie Française ), which was established soon thereafter. Since then, world congresses have been held in different countries every year, except during the two World Wars, and the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic (when it was moved to an online-only event). Since the Second World War , they have been attended by an average of more than 2,000 people, and up to 6,000 people at the most. Zamenhof wrote that he wanted mankind to "learn and use ... en masse ...
4251-725: The COVID-19 pandemic ( Esperanto : pandemio KOVIM-19 ) occupational safety and health education course. All personal documents sold by the World Service Authority , including the World Passport , are written in Esperanto, together with the official languages of the United Nations : English , French , Spanish , Russian , Arabic , and Chinese . Esperanto has not been a secondary official language of any recognized country. However, it has entered
4360-602: The Esperanto alphabet by Brooke Vibber, an Esperanto speaker and later Wikimedia Foundation 's first employee, in January 2002 has paved the way for alphabets of languages other than English and initiated the transition of the whole Misplaced Pages to Unicode . As of January 2022, the Esperanto Misplaced Pages has 309 articles of feature quality ( elstaraj artikoloj ) and a further 279 considered worth reading ( legindaj artikoloj ). Weekly community projects include
4469-579: The Gulag labour camps. Quite often the accusation was: "You are an active member of an international spy organization which hides itself under the name of 'Association of Soviet Esperantists' on the territory of the Soviet Union." Until the end of the Stalin era, it was dangerous to use Esperanto in the Soviet Union, even though it was never officially forbidden to speak Esperanto. Fascist Italy allowed
Esperanto Misplaced Pages - Misplaced Pages Continue
4578-489: The Indo-European group . A substantial majority of its vocabulary (approximately 80%) derives from Romance languages , but it also contains elements derived from Germanic , Greek , and Slavic languages. One of the language's most notable features is its extensive system of derivation , where prefixes and suffixes may be freely combined with roots to generate words, making it possible to communicate effectively with
4687-851: The Indo-European languages spoken in Europe. Beside his native Yiddish and (Belo)Russian, Zamenhof studied German, Hebrew, Latin, English, Spanish, Lithuanian, Italian, French, Aramaic and Volapük , knowing altogether something of 13 different languages, which had an influence on Esperanto's linguistic properties. Esperantist and linguist Ilona Koutny notes that Esperanto's vocabulary, phrase structure, agreement systems, and semantic typology are similar to those of Indo-European languages spoken in Europe. However, Koutny and Esperantist Humphrey Tonkin also note that Esperanto has features that are atypical of Indo-European languages spoken in Europe, such as its agglutinative morphology. Claude Piron argued that Esperanto word-formation has more in common with that of Chinese than with typical European languages , and that
4796-627: The Montevideo Resolution . However, Esperanto is not one of the six official languages of the UN . The development of Esperanto has continued unabated into the 21st century. The advent of the Internet has had a significant impact on the language, as learning it has become increasingly accessible on platforms such as Duolingo , and as speakers have increasingly networked on platforms such as Amikumu . With up to two million speakers, it
4905-742: The Pardubice Region and covered by Czech Television . Esperanto organisations like Universal Esperanto Association do not contribute to Vikipedio but support it by providing chambers at Esperanto conventions for Vikipedio presentations and trainings. At the World Esperanto Congress in Rotterdam, summer 2008, there were two Wikipedian meetups and a lecture at the Esperantology Conference. In April 2013, ELiSo ( Esperanto and Free Knowledge )
5014-599: The first book of Esperanto grammar was published in Warsaw on July 26, 1887. The number of speakers grew rapidly over the next few decades; at first, primarily in the Russian Empire and Central Europe, then in other parts of Europe, the Americas, China, and Japan. In the early years before the world congresses, speakers of Esperanto kept in contact primarily through correspondence and periodicals. Zamenhof's name for
5123-452: The grammatical suffixes: mala (opposite), eta (slight), ano (a member), umo (a doohickey ), eble (possibly), iĝi (to become), ero (a bit, a crumb). Also, through compounding, lexical roots may act as affixes: vidi (to see), povi (to be able to), vidpova (able to see, not blind); ĉefo (head, chief), urbo (a city), ĉefurbo (a capital). It
5232-640: The 1920s as the heyday of the Esperanto movement. During this time, Anarchism as a political movement was very supportive of both anationalism and the Esperanto language. Fran Novljan was one of the chief promoters of Esperanto in the former Kingdom of Yugoslavia . He was among the founders of the Croatian Prosvjetni savez (Educational Alliance), of which he was the first secretary, and organized Esperanto institutions in Zagreb . Novljan collaborated with Esperanto newspapers and magazines, and
5341-558: The 1970s Esperanto was used as the basis for Defense Language Aptitude Tests. Beginning in 1908, there were efforts to establish the world's first Esperanto state in Neutral Moresnet , which at the time was a Belgian – Prussian condominium in central-western Europe. Any such efforts came to an end with the beginning of World War I and the German invasion of Belgium , voiding the treaty which established joint sovereignty over
5450-568: The Esperanto root vid- (see) regularly corresponds to some two dozen English words: see (saw, seen), sight, blind, vision, visual, visible, nonvisual, invisible, unsightly, glance, view, vista, panorama, observant etc., though there are also separate Esperanto roots for some of these concepts. In the Fundamento , Zamenhof illustrated word formation by deriving the equivalents of recuperate, disease, hospital, germ, patient, doctor, medicine, pharmacy , etc. from sana (healthy). Not all of
5559-459: The Esperanto translation of the Bible it has shifted in use to a prefix, but either way the resulting words are ambiguous. Bovoviro "bovine-man" and virbovo "man-bovine", for example, could mean either " minotaur " or "bull", and therefore both taŭro (bull) and minotaŭro (minotaur) have been borrowed into the language to disambiguate. Adjectival usage of vira is also found, but
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#17327799588915668-456: The European languages predominant at the time was by creating a regular and highly productive derivational morphology . Through the judicious use of lexical affixes (prefixes and suffixes), the core vocabulary needed for communication was greatly reduced, making Esperanto a more agglutinative language than most European languages. It has been estimated that on average one root in Esperanto
5777-522: The accusative case when standing in for the object of a clause. The accusative of motion is used with the place correlatives in -ie , forming -ien (hither, whither, thither, etc.). Several adverbial particles are used primarily with the correlatives: ajn indicates generality, ĉi indicates proximity, and for indicates distance. (Without these particles, demonstratives such as tiu and tio are not specific about distance, though they are usually translated as "that".) Sometimes
5886-576: The aim of reaching 300,000 articles. That number was reached on 20 July 2021. At least three editors are members of the Academy of Esperanto : Gerrit Berveling , John C. Wells , and Bertilo Wennergren , a notable Esperanto grammarian and the director of the Academy's section about Esperanto vocabulary . Vikipedio incorporates, with permission, the content of the 1934 Enciklopedio de Esperanto and also content from several reference books and
5995-423: The causative -ig- . Usually, feminine nouns are derived from epicene (genderless) roots via the suffix -ino . A relatively small number of Esperanto roots are semantically masculine or feminine. In some but not all cases, masculine roots also have feminine derivatives via -ino . Usage is consistent for only a few dozen words. For others, people may differ in usage, or it may be difficult to tell whether
6104-459: The correlative system is extended to the root ali- (other), at least when the resulting word is unambiguous, Alie , however, would be ambiguous as to whether the original meaning "otherwise" or the correlative "elsewhere" were intended, so aliloke (from loko "place") is used for "elsewhere". As a practical matter, only aliel and alies are seen with any frequency, and even they are condemned by many speakers. Examples of
6213-409: The course of the century, as many similar words did in English, because of social transformation. Once such a word is used ambiguously by a significant number of speakers or writers, it can no longer be assumed to be masculine. Language guides suggest using all ambiguous words neutrally, and many people find this the least confusing approach—and so the ranks of masculine words gradually dwindle. There
6322-565: The debates in ethnic languages are motivated by nationalism or issues of cultural identity, in Esperanto the debates are largely motivated by differing views on how to make the language practical and accessible. One of the most immediately useful derivational affixes for the beginner is the prefix mal- , which derives antonyms : peza (heavy), malpeza (light); supren (upwards), malsupren (downwards); ami (to love), malami (to hate); lumo (light), mallumo (darkness). However, except in jokes, this prefix
6431-527: The decision. However, two years later, the League recommended that its member states include Esperanto in their educational curricula. The French government retaliated by banning all instruction in Esperanto in France's schools and universities. The French Ministry of Public Instruction said that "French and English would perish and the literary standard of the world would be debased". Nonetheless, many people see
6540-406: The dedicated words for male animals, are fundamentally masculine and are never used with the feminine suffix. The others remain masculine mainly because Zamenhof did not establish a way to derive masculine words the way he did for feminine words. To partially remedy this, the root vir (man) has long been used to form the masculine of animal words. Originally a suffix, since the 1926 publication of
6649-792: The details of their mythology, and there is nothing preventing masculine usage in fiction. Even outside of fiction, words such as muzo (muse) nimfo (nymph) may be used metaphorically for males, and a collection of Goethe 's poetry has been translated under the title La Muzino ('The [female] Muse'), with gendered metaphorical usage. Similarly, sireno is also the biological name for sea-cows (Latin Sirenia ), and as such one can speak of sirenino (a female sea-cow). The ending of all assimilated nouns in Esperanto with -o , including personal names, clashes with Romance languages such as Italian and Spanish, in which -o marks masculine names, and feminine names end in -a . For example,
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#17327799588916758-401: The education systems of several countries, including Hungary and China. Esperanto was also the first language of teaching and administration of the now-defunct International Academy of Sciences San Marino . The League of Nations made attempts to promote the teaching of Esperanto in its member countries, but the resolutions were defeated (mainly by French delegates, who did not feel there
6867-773: The final part-of-speech vowel in the suffix list below. A few affixes do not affect the part of speech of the root; for the suffixes listed in the tables below, this is indicated by a hyphen in place of the final vowel. There are, in addition, affixes not listed here: technical affixes, such as the biological family suffix -edo seen in numidedo ( Guineafowls ), and a few non-standard affixes taken from Ido , such as -oza (full of) in montoza (mountainous), muskoloza (muscular), poroza (porous). A proposed suffix -ala makes adjectives out of nouns made from adjectives: varmala (caloric, from varma warm), ŝtataligi (nationalize). Lexical (i.e. derivational ) affixes may act as roots by taking one of
6976-456: The first time one hears it. Derivation by affix greatly expands a speaker's vocabulary, sometimes beyond what they know in their native language. For instance, the English word ommatidium (a single lens of a compound eye) is rather obscure, but a child would be able to coin an Esperanto equivalent, okulero , from okulo 'an eye' (or perhaps, more precisely, okularero , by first coining okularo for 'a compound eye'). In this way
7085-476: The form of their source language, whether the phonetic form ( eks- from ex- ) or orthographic form ( teamo from team ). However, each root can then form dozens of derivations that may bear little resemblance to equivalent words in the source languages, such as registaro (government), which is derived from the Latinate root reg (to rule). One of the ways Zamenhof made Esperanto easier to learn than
7194-469: The fully Esperantized form of 'Mary' is Mario , which resembles Spanish masculine Mario rather than feminine María . (Though suffixed Mariino is also available, it is seldom seen.) This has resulted in some writers using a final -a for feminine names with cognates in Romance languages, such as Johano "John" vs. Johana "Joanna", rather than using the feminine suffix -in for
7303-408: The functions of asking, answering, denying, being inclusive, and being indefinite about these nine questions. For example, the words kiam (when) and kiu (who, which), with the initial ki- of questions, ask about time and individuals, whereas the tiam (then) and tiu (this/that one), with the same endings but the initial ti- of demonstratives , answer those questions, and
7412-411: The geographical spread of its editors (see the box on the right), the Esperanto Misplaced Pages has a varied list of countries of origin of its editors. On 13 August 2014, Esperanto Misplaced Pages reached 200,000 articles. In the opening of 2021, ILEI published a text by Mireille Grosjean about the twentieth anniversary of the Esperanto Misplaced Pages. UEA followed, which, like ILEI, called for contributions with
7521-742: The interrogative versus relative uses of the ki- words: Also, Note that standard Esperanto punctuation puts a comma before the relative word (a correlative in ki- or the conjunction ke , "that"), a feature common to many Slavic languages. Various parts of speech may be derived from the correlatives, just as from any other roots: ĉiama (eternal), ĉiea (ubiquitous), tiama (contemporary), kialo (a reason), iomete (a little bit), kioma etaĝo? (which floor?) [This last requests an ordinal answer of how many floors up, like la dek-sesa (the 16th), rather than asking someone to simply point out which floor, which would be asked with kiu etaĝo? . The same form
7630-439: The language learning platform Duolingo launched a free Esperanto course for English speakers On March 25, 2016, when the first Duolingo Esperanto course completed its beta-testing phase, that course had 350,000 people registered to learn Esperanto through the medium of English. By July 2018, the number of learners had risen to 1.36 million. On July 20, 2018, Duolingo changed from recording users cumulatively to reporting only
7739-602: The language of one of Germany's Axis allies . In Imperial Japan , the left wing of the Japanese Esperanto movement was forbidden, but its leaders were careful enough not to give the impression to the government that the Esperantists were socialist revolutionaries, which proved a successful strategy. After the October Revolution of 1917, Esperanto was given a measure of government support by
7848-486: The language was simply Internacia Lingvo ("International Language"). December 15, Zamenhof's birthday, is now regarded as Zamenhof Day or Esperanto Book Day. The autonomous territory of Neutral Moresnet , between what is today Belgium and Germany, had a sizable proportion of Esperanto-speaking citizens among its small, diverse population. There was a proposal to make Esperanto its official language. However, neither Belgium nor Germany had surrendered their claims to
7957-429: The language would be used by radio amateurs in international communications, but its actual use for radio communications was negligible. The United States Army has published military phrase books in Esperanto, to be used from the 1950s until the 1970s in war games by mock enemy forces . A field reference manual, FM 30-101-1 Feb. 1962, contained the grammar, English-Esperanto-English dictionary, and common phrases. In
8066-479: The largest Misplaced Pages in a constructed language . Chuck Smith, an American Esperantist , is considered to be Esperanto Misplaced Pages's founder. The encyclopedia started off when he imported the 139 articles of the Enciklopedio Kalblanda by Stefano Kalb, which took him three weeks following 15 November 2001. Later on, he undertook a journey to Europe with the goal of popularizing Misplaced Pages among
8175-508: The list of vital articles, but having in general relatively short articles. On 18 November 2008, the Esperanto Misplaced Pages implemented the Flagged Revisions extension. As of February 2012, the Esperanto Misplaced Pages had the 5th greatest number of articles per speaker among Wikipedias with over 100,000 articles, and ranked 11th overall. These figures were based on Ethnologue ' s estimate of 2,000,000 Esperanto speakers. Due to
8284-424: The monthly periodical Monato . The Esperanto Misplaced Pages has been featured in many Esperanto news media, including a radio interview at Radio Polonia , and articles at Esperanto , Kontakto , Libera Folio and Raporto.info . The Esperanto Wikimania, a gathering held in 2011 to celebrate the encyclopedia's 10th anniversary, has been subsidized by the host city of Svitavy ( Czech Republic ) and
8393-488: The new borrowings or coinages have been technical or scientific terms; terms in everyday use are more likely to be derived from existing words (for example komputilo [a computer], from komputi [to compute]), or extending them to cover new meanings (for example muso [a mouse], now also signifies a computer input device, as in English). There are frequent debates among Esperanto speakers about whether
8502-762: The new communist states in the former Russian Empire and later by the Soviet Union government, with the Soviet Esperantist Union being established as an organization that, temporarily, was officially recognized. In his biography on Joseph Stalin , Leon Trotsky mentions that Stalin had studied Esperanto. However, in 1937, at the height of the Great Purge , Stalin completely reversed the Soviet government's policies on Esperanto; many Esperanto speakers were executed, exiled or held in captivity in
8611-552: The nominal suffix -o- , used regardless of number or case, but other grammatical suffixes may be used when the inherent part of speech of the first root of the compound needs to be changed. Prepositions are frequently found in compounds, and behave much like prefixes, Since affixes may be used as root words, and roots may combine like affixes, the boundary between the two is blurred. Many so-called affixes are indistinguishable from other roots. However, "true" affixes are grammatically fixed as being either prefixes or suffixes, whereas
8720-1144: The number of "active learners" (i.e., those who are studying at the time and have not yet completed the course), which as of October 2022 stands at 299,000 learners. On October 26, 2016, a second Duolingo Esperanto course, for which the language of instruction is Spanish, appeared on the same platform and which as of April 2021 has a further 176,000 students. A third Esperanto course, taught in Brazilian Portuguese, began its beta-testing phase on May 14, 2018, and as of April 2021, 220,000 people are using this course and 155,000 people in May 2022. A fourth Esperanto course, taught in French, began its beta-testing phase in July 2020, and as of March 2021 has 72,500 students and 101,000 students in May 2022. As of October 2018, Lernu! , another online learning platform for Esperanto, has 320,000 registered users, and nearly 75,000 monthly visits. 50,000 users possess at least
8829-438: The number of Esperanto features shared with Slavic languages warrants the identification of a Slavic-derived stratum of language structure that he calls the "Middle Plane". Esperanto typically has 22 to 24 consonants (depending on the phonemic analysis and individual speaker), five vowels, and two semivowels that combine with the vowels to form six diphthongs . (The consonant /j/ and semivowel /i̯/ are both written ⟨j⟩, and
8938-448: The order of roots in compounds is determined by semantics. Although Zamenhof did not prescribe rules for which consonant sequences are not acceptable and therefore when the epenthetic -o- is required, he generally omitted it when the result was a sequence of two consonants, as in velŝipo above. However, he inserted an -o- , Reduplication is only marginally used in Esperanto. It has an intensifying effect similar to that of
9047-412: The others (and more) are available if needed. The correlatives are a paradigm of pro-forms , used to ask and answer the questions what, where, when, why, who, whose, how, how much , and what kind . They are constructed from set elements so that correlatives with similar meanings have similar forms: There are nine endings corresponding to the nine wh- questions, and five initial elements that perform
9156-535: The petitions... About the same time, in the middle of the block marched a huge demonstration of people holding posters reading "Learn Esperanto", "Support the Universal language", "Esperanto the language of hope and expectation", "Esperanto the bond for international communication" and so on, and many "Sign the petitions". I will never forget that rich-poor, sad-glad parade and among all these people stood two fiery red tramway cars waiting on their opposite lanes and also
9265-440: The proposal with only one voice against, the French delegate, Gabriel Hanotaux . Hanotaux opposed all recognition of Esperanto at the League, from the first resolution on December 18, 1920, and subsequently through all efforts during the next three years. Hanotaux did not approve of how the French language was losing its position as the international language and saw Esperanto as a threat, effectively wielding his veto power to block
9374-526: The proposed language as a living one". The goal for Esperanto to become a global auxiliary language was not Zamenhof's only goal; he also wanted to "enable the learner to make direct use of his knowledge with persons of any nationality, whether the language be universally accepted or not; in other words, the language is to be directly a means of international communication". After some ten years of development, which Zamenhof spent translating literature into Esperanto, as well as writing original prose and verse,
9483-521: The pseudonym Doktoro Esperanto . Early adopters of the language liked the name Esperanto and soon used it to describe his language. The word esperanto translates into English as "one who hopes". Within the range of constructed languages, Esperanto occupies a middle ground between "naturalistic" (imitating existing natural languages) and a priori (where features are not based on existing languages). Esperanto's vocabulary , syntax and semantics derive predominantly from languages of
9592-404: The region, with the latter having adopted a more aggressive stance towards pursuing its claim around the turn of the century, even being accused of sabotage and administrative obstruction to force the issue. The outbreak of World War I would bring about the end of neutrality, with Moresnet initially left as "an oasis in a desert of destruction" following the German invasion of Belgium. The territory
9701-974: The resulting words translate well into English, in many cases because they distinguish fine shades of meaning that English lacks: sano , sana , sane , sani , sanu , saniga , saneco , sanilo , sanigi , saniĝi , sanejo , sanisto , sanulo , malsano , malsana , malsane , malsani , malsanulo , malsaniga , malsaniĝi , malsaneta , malsanema , malsanulejo , malsanulisto , malsanero , malsaneraro , sanigebla , sanigisto , sanigilo , resanigi , resaniĝanto , sanigilejo , sanigejo , malsanemulo , sanilaro , malsanaro , malsanulido , nesana , malsanado , sanulaĵo , malsaneco , malsanemeco , saniginda , sanilujo , sanigilujo , remalsano , remalsaniĝo , malsanulino , sanigista , sanigilista , sanilista , malsanulista . Perhaps half of these words are in common use, but
9810-414: The results are poetic: In one Esperanto novel, a man opens an old book with a broken spine, and the yellowed pages disliberiĝas [from the root libera (free) and the affixes dis- and -iĝ- ]. There is no equivalent way to express this in English, but it creates a very strong visual image of the pages escaping the book and scattering over the floor. More importantly, the word is comprehensible
9919-421: The singular (as explained below). Some words, such as papo ( pope ), are masculine in practice, but they are not inherently masculine and a feminine referent could be used in fiction or if customs change. In the early twentieth century, members of a profession were assumed to be masculine unless specified otherwise with -ino , reflecting the expectations of most industrial societies. That is, sekretario
10028-643: The speakers of Esperanto in European countries. For instance, in November 2002 he gave a talk about Misplaced Pages at the 10th Conference on the Application of Esperanto in Science and Technology in Dobřichovice ( Czech Republic ). Esperanto speakers have also been involved in the founding of several other language versions of Misplaced Pages ( Czech , Slovak , Ossetian , Swahili ). The introduction of support for
10137-498: The stress on the second i , but when the word is used without the final o ( famili’ ), the stress remains on the second i : [fa.mi.ˈli] . The 23 consonants are: There is some degree of allophony: A large number of consonant clusters can occur, up to three in initial position (as in stranga , "strange") and five in medial position (as in ekssklavo , "former slave"). Final clusters are uncommon except in unassimilated names, poetic elision of final o , and
10246-442: The suffix -eg- . The common examples are plenplena (chock-full), from plena (full), finfine (finally, at last), from fina (final), and fojfoje (once in a while), from foje (once, sometimes). Reduplication is only used with monosyllabic roots that do not require an epenthetic vowel when compounded. Affixes may be used in novel ways, creating new words that don't exist in any national language. Sometimes
10355-426: The suffix a rather than o even when fully assimilated. When a name ending in a vowel is fully assimilated, the vowel is often changed to inflectional o , rather than the o being added to the full root. As with borrowed common nouns, this may be criticized if the vowel is part of the root rather than inflectional in the source language, because the resulting form may not be readily recognized by native speakers of
10464-563: The suspicion of many states. Repression was especially pronounced in Nazi Germany , Francoist Spain up until the 1950s, and the Soviet Union under Stalin , from 1937 to 1956. In Nazi Germany, there was a motivation to ban Esperanto because Zamenhof was Jewish, and due to the internationalist nature of Esperanto, which was perceived as "Bolshevist". In his work, Mein Kampf , Adolf Hitler specifically mentioned Esperanto as an example of
10573-506: The territory. The Treaty of Versailles subsequently awarded the disputed territory to Belgium, effective January 10, 1920. The self-proclaimed micronation of Rose Island , on an artificial island near Italy in the Adriatic Sea , used Esperanto as its official language in 1968. Another micronation, the extant Republic of Molossia , near Dayton, Nevada , uses Esperanto as an official language alongside English. On May 28, 2015,
10682-400: The uncommon consonant /dz/ is written with the digraph ⟨dz⟩, which is the only consonant that does not have its own letter.) Tone is not used to distinguish meanings of words. Stress is always on the second-to-last vowel in proper Esperanto words, unless a final vowel o is elided , a phenomenon mostly occurring in poetry. For example, familio "family" is [fa.mi.ˈli.o] , with
10791-577: The use of Esperanto, finding its phonology similar to that of Italian and publishing some tourist material in the language. During and after the Spanish Civil War , Francoist Spain suppressed anarchists , socialists and Catalan nationalists for many years, among whom the use of Esperanto was extensive, but in the 1950s the Esperanto movement was again tolerated. In 1954, the United Nations — through UNESCO — granted official support to Esperanto as an international auxiliary language in
10900-611: The use of the demonstrative pronoun tiu (that one), and ĝi (Zamenhof's suggestion). See the discussions at gender reform in Esperanto . People sometimes object to using the prefix mal- to derive highly frequent antonyms, especially when they are as long as malproksima (far). There are a few alternative roots in poetry, such as turpa for malbelega (very ugly) and pigra for mallaborema (lazy) – some of which originated in Ido – that find their way into prose. However, they are rarely used in conversation. This
11009-402: The words neniam (never) neniu (no-one) deny those questions. Thus by learning these 14 elements the speaker acquires a paradigm of 45 adverbs and pronouns. The correlatives beginning ti- correspond to the English demonstratives in th- (this, thus, then, there etc.), whereas ĉi- corresponds to every- and i- to some- . The correlatives beginning with ki- have
11118-426: The world. A group of people had organized and sent letters to the government asking to change the name of the street where Dr. Zamenhof lived for many years when he invented Esperanto, from Dzika to Zamenhofa. They were told that a petition with a large number of signatures would be needed. That took time so they organized demonstrations carrying large posters encouraging people to learn the universal language and to sign
11227-554: Was a male secretary, and instruisto was a male teacher. This was the case for all words ending in -isto , as well as -ulo ( riĉulo "a rich man "), -ano and ethnicities ( kristano "a male Christian", anglo "an English man "), -estro ( urbestro "a male mayor"), and the participles -into, -anto, -onto, -ito, -ato, -oto ( komencanto "a male beginner"). Many domestic animals were also masculine ( bovo "bull", kapro "billygoat", koko "rooster"). These generally became gender-neutral over
11336-634: Was a need for it). The Chinese government has used Esperanto since 2001 for an Esperanto version of its China Internet Information Center . China also uses Esperanto in China Radio International , and for the internet magazine El Popola Ĉinio . The Vatican Radio has an Esperanto version of its podcasts and its website. In the summer of 1924, the American Radio Relay League adopted Esperanto as its official international auxiliary language, and hoped that
11445-406: Was always a great torment to my infant mind, although many people may smile at such an 'anguish for the world' in a child. Since at that time I thought that 'grown-ups' were omnipotent, I often said to myself that when I grew up I would certainly destroy this evil. It was invented in 1887 and designed so that anyone could learn it in a few short months. Dr. Zamenhof lived on Dzika Street, No. 9, which
11554-523: Was established as one of the first Wikimedia user groups. The Esperanto Misplaced Pages community has created and published a 40-page Misplaced Pages: Practical Handbook (Esperanto: Vikipedio: Praktika Manlibro ), which is sold online and at conventions. The manual is intended to give new Wikipedians advice and information on how to edit Misplaced Pages in Esperanto. It is currently in its second printing. Esperanto language Esperanto ( / ˌ ɛ s p ə ˈ r ɑː n t oʊ / , /- æ n t oʊ / )
11663-624: Was formally annexed by Prussia in 1915, though without international recognition. After the war, a great opportunity for Esperanto seemingly presented itself, when the Iranian delegation to the League of Nations proposed that the language be adopted for use in international relations following a report by a Japanese delegate to the League named Nitobe Inazō , in the context of the 13th World Congress of Esperanto, held in Prague . Ten delegates accepted
11772-402: Was just around the corner from the street on which we lived. Brother Afrum was so impressed with that idea that he learned Esperanto in a very short time at home from a little book. He then bought many dozens of them and gave them out to relatives, friends, just anyone he could, to support that magnificent idea for he felt that this would be a common bond to promote relationships with fellow men in
11881-702: Was the author of the Esperanto textbook Internacia lingvo esperanto i Esperanto en tridek lecionoj . In 1920s Korea , socialist thinkers pushed for the use of Esperanto through a series of columns in The Dong-a Ilbo as resistance to both Japanese occupation as well as a counter to the growing nationalist movement for Korean language standardization. This lasted until the Mukden Incident in 1931, when changing colonial policy led to an outright ban on Esperanto education in Korea . Esperanto attracted
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