Esperanto
When we visited the Expolingua (an international language fair) this weekend we got to see over 120 exhibitors from more than twenty countries presenting more or less interesting information about their programs.
The fair did not quite come up to our expectations since it was rather an advertising affair and very commercialised. But then we took part in a so-called mini-workshop for Esperanto and in 45 minutes we got a general idea of the language.
As we did not exactly understand what the study of such a language would be useful for, we decided to do a little research about it:
Esperanto is not a language that has naturally developed but thought to have been created for a more simple communication between people from all over the world.
Esperanto grammar is note-worthy. There are no irregularities, a free word order, simple rules of pronunciation, a well-thought-out system of word formation and vocabulary with Romance and Germanic roots.
Studying Esperanto is therefore really easy and you can learn it three times faster than any other language.
Already in 1887 a man called Zarenhof had come up with the idea of developing an international language. In the 1920s it was taught in more than one hundred public schools in Germany .
During the dictatorships of, for example, Hitler and Stalin, and even after that, Esperanto was prohibited and people who spoke it were persecuted.
Over the last thirty years the language has become more and more popular and nowadays there are children whose parents teach them Esperanto as a native language.
It is mainly spoken during organized Esperanto meetings and congresses from people all over the world. Today a wide range of literature and lyrics exists in this language.
There are several points of criticism about the language itself and no one could call it a perfectly planned language.
And in spite of our research we were not able to find out why some people put so much energy and enthusiasm into learning a language that only 3,000,000 people spread across the whole world speak.
Verena Karl, Leonie Schiffauer, 3. Semester
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