📗 What Is Esperanto?

In a nutshell, it is a language created to foster mutual understanding, peace and friendship across language barriers.

It's more equitable than using natural languages for international communication, as it isn't tied to any country. Through Esperanto, people from different nations can communicate on a more equal basis.

It's very easy to learn, as it has simple, consistent rules that are free from the many exceptions and quirks that make foreign natural languages so hard and time consuming to master. You can pick up the basics in a blink, become conversational in months, and then even use it as a springboard to more easily learn other languages.

It's expressive and fun. Think of it as the Lego of languages, with basic building blocks you can combine to create new words as needed, precisely expressing every concept imaginable, in ways that can be understood by any other speaker. Many eventually miss this expressiveness in their own native languages.

It's alive. Esperanto is the language of a vibrant global community you can find on almost every digital platform, with people you can meet all over the world (many of whom will even host you for free), and a busy calendar of international events. It has a music scene and literature, YouTube channels and podcasts, and a larger Wikipedia than most national languages.

It's welcoming. As a language created to promote international friendship, it tends to attract friendly, tolerant and open-minded people who are enthusiastic about connecting with others through the language. If the medium is the message, a choice to communicate in Esperanto already indicates a desire for mutual respect and understanding.

It's culturally diverse. When natural languages are used for international communication, non-native speaker voices have a harder time getting through. Esperanto speakers come from everywhere, and using it will expose you to a much wider variety of perspectives.

It's enduring. The staying power of Esperanto's ideals has carried it for 136 years through world wars, persecution, derision and fragmentation, from the salons of the 19th century, to the Minecraft and Mastodon servers of the 21st. Today it is the world's most widely-spoken non-natural language.

Why does Esperanto continue to exist even though historically it has had more opportunities to die than to live? Because people continue to come who admire and love it so much that they dedicate huge energy to sharing it. It's worth asking yourself, what about it attracts people to that degree?
- Claude Piron

📗 What Is Esperanto?

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