An ode to Esperanto and its ideal of a universal language for all of humankind

Given that around 7,111 languages are spoken today, why make a new one? While some dismiss it as an eccentric hobby for language nerds, Esperanto has played important roles in the world.

Mar 04, 2025

Reading time: 4 minutes

Around 7,111 languages are spoken today, a constantly fluctuating number that doesn’t include dialects. Chinese has 13 variations, Arabic 20. According to Ethnologue (cited in Gammage), even if we were conversant in 50 languages, in a country such as Papua New Guinea, where 840 languages are spoken, we would still unable to communicate with most people.

Despite this rich variety, an estimated 80% of online content is available in only one of 10 languages: English, Chinese, Spanish, Japanese, Arabic, Portuguese, German, French, Russian and Korean. So, why make a new one? While some dismiss it as an eccentric hobby for language nerds, the international auxiliary language (IAL) Esperanto has played very important roles in the world.

Esperanto was invented by the Polish ophthalmologist L.L. Zamenhof in the late 1800s. At the time, his city, Białystok, was very diverse, with large numbers of Poles, Germans, Russians and Yiddish-speaking Ashkenazi Jews. Each group spoke a different language and viewed the others with suspicion.

While Russian was his mother tongue and he had studied in Russia, Zamenhof also spoke Polish, learned Yiddish from his mother, and studied German, English, Spanish, Lithuanian, Italian and French. At school, he also learned Hebrew, Latin and Aramaic. In the parlance of our times, he was a total language nerd.

Zamenhof longed for a tolerant world, free from the horrors of war. He dreamed of bringing people together. To usher in this new world, he decided to construct an IAL. IALs are not designed to be anyone’s mother tongue, but to be able to be learned swiftly as a second language to facilitate easy conversation with people from across the world – a supplementary, neutral language. Studies have shown that students who first learn Esperanto as a secondary language learn a third more easily and quickly than if they had learned another language instead.

After years of work, Zamenhof published Unua libro (‘First book’) in Warsaw in July 1887 under the pseudonym Doktoro Esperanto (‘Dr. Hope’ or ‘Dr. Hopeful’). It contained a dictionary of 920 word roots that, when combined with 16 simple (exception-free!) grammar rules, could form tens of thousands of words. There are no irregular verbs and the spelling is phonetic. Esperanto has its roots in the Indo-European Romance languages, with few influences or inclusions from Asian or Indigenous languages.

Zamenhof’s book was translated into more than a dozen languages, and he renounced all rights to his creation, declaring Esperanto “the property of society” (cited in Holzer). He remained involved in disseminating it for the remainder of his life.

Esperanto soon spread to Asia, North America, South America, the Middle East and Africa. Societies formed and more books saw the light. Moresnet – a small, neutral principality between Belgium and Germany – declared it their official language, even changing its name to Amikejo – Esperanto for friendship. For some decades, it seemed that Zamenhof’s dream was being fulfilled. Until World War I. Many people abandoned Esperanto because, in their view, it could not stop Europe from sliding into war.

Zamenhof died in 1917, during the height of the war. World War II was a second major setback. Hitler and Stalin strongly opposed Esperanto, persecuting and/or killing its speakers and those suspected of speaking it.

In 1954, UNESCO recognised and entered into a relationship with the Universal Esperanto Association. This has given the Esperanto movement representation at its language events. In 1985, UNESCO passed a resolution encouraging countries to add Esperanto to their school curricula. It declared 2017 the year of Zamenhof, and its flagship journal, the UNESCO Courier, has had an Esperanto edition published quarterly ever since.

In the last 10 years of his life, Zamenhof was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize 14 times. The Universal Esperanto Association has been nominated more than 100 times, in recognition of its “contribution to world peace by permitting people in different countries to enter direct relations without linguistic barriers” (cited in Holzer). Eight Nobel Laureates have been Esperantists.

Leo Tolstoy helped found the Esperantist Vegetarian Association in 1908. Vienna is home to the International Esperanto Museum. A metro station in Barcelona has been named after Zamenhof.

Esperanto survived into the 21st century primarily due to small groups of enthusiasts and the Internet. As at 2024, according to Gammage, Esperanto is estimated to have between 100,000 and 2 million fluent speakers. Some speak it as their first language.

The biggest Esperanto event is the Universala Kongreso, which has been held in a different city almost every year since 1905. Thus, it is a living language that, in Axel Belinfante’s view, is capable of expressing all facets of human thought.

In Divine philosophy, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá (the son of the founder of the Bahá’í faith) wrote: “Praise be to God, that Dr. Zamenhof has constructed the Esperanto language. It has all the potential qualities of universal adoption. All of us must be grateful and thankful to him for his noble effort, for in this matter he has served his fellow-man well. He has done a service which will bestow divine benefits on all peoples. With untiring effort and self-sacrifice on the part of its devotees it holds a promise of universal acceptance.” (cited in Gammage).

In the early days of the faith, Bahá’ís were encouraged to learn it and to translate Bahá’í texts into Esperanto. It advocated that Esperanto be taught to children in schools throughout the world, envisaging that future generations need learn only two languages, their native tongue and Esperanto.

The most commonly cited reason for learning Esperanto is the community. Its speakers continue to make new friends and penfriends. They reach out, both online and in real life. The Internet has been a gift to the language, connecting speakers from across the world. On the website Pasporta Servo, one can find Esperantists who for instance let fellow speakers stay with them at low or no cost while on holiday. There’s a radio station, an active subreddit and local groups, among others.

Google Translate incorporates it, and Esperanto’s Wikipedia edition is said to contain more entries than the Danish, Greek and Welsh editions.

A universal language can go a long way towards realising the ideals of Bahá’ís and other faith groups – the oneness of humankind, fellowship and love. Esperanto can help remove religious misunderstandings, help unite the East and the West, and can help remove ignorance and superstition. It can increase collaboration, help birth new discoveries and inventions, advance the sciences, and increase inclusiveness. It can even help us achieve world peace. Many Bahá’ís still speak Esperanto.

Though it has not grown to be universal, Esperanto continues to draw people together around its profoundly humanist and idealistic core values. Thank you, Dr Zamenhof.

About Johan

If you’re a client, you’ll know my name (Johan Emerson Grobler) and e-mail addresses (ink@johangrobler.com, jegrobler1@gmail.com). While I trained as a copywriter, I’ve been line editing, copyediting and proofreading academic papers and theses since 2007, and have helped authors to successfully submit papers to at least 92 journals.

Almost everything that has value in the world is the result of writing. Great writing can be the difference between approval or rejection, resources allocated or denied, and a cum laude or a summa cum laude. I assemble hard-working sentences that can be inhaled like ice cream.

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