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Esperanto

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Languages

   Esperanto
   Flag:
   Esperanto flag
   Created by: L.L. Zamenhof  1887
   Setting and usage: International auxiliary language
   Total speakers: Native: approx. 1000;
   Fluent speakers: est. 100,000 to 2 million
   Category (purpose): constructed language
     International auxiliary language
     Esperanto
   Category (sources): vocabulary from Romance and Germanic languages;
   phonology from Slavic languages
   Regulated by: Akademio de Esperanto
   Language codes
   ISO 639-1: eo
   ISO 639-2: epo
   ISO/FDIS 639-3: epo
   Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. See IPA
   chart for English for an English-​based pronunciation key.

   Esperanto  is the most widely spoken constructed international
   language. The name derives from Doktoro Esperanto, the pseudonym under
   which L. L. Zamenhof first published the Unua Libro in 1887. The word
   itself means 'one who hopes'. Zamenhof's goal was to create an easy and
   flexible language as a universal second language to foster peace and
   international understanding.

   Although no country has adopted the language officially, it has enjoyed
   continuous usage by a community estimated at between 100,000 and 2
   million speakers and it is estimated that there are about a thousand
   native speakers.

   Today, Esperanto is employed in world travel, correspondence, cultural
   exchange, conventions, literature, language instruction, television (
   Internacia Televido) and radio broadcasting. Some state education
   systems offer elective courses in Esperanto; there is evidence that
   learning Esperanto is a useful preparation for later language learning
   (see Esperanto and education).

History

   Esperanto was developed in the late 1870s and early 1880s by
   ophthalmologist Dr. Ludovic Lazarus Zamenhof, a Polish Jew from the
   West of the Russian Empire (now Poland). After some ten years of
   development, which Zamenhof spent translating literature into the
   language as well as writing original prose and verse, the first
   Esperanto grammar was published in Warsaw in July 1887. The number of
   speakers grew rapidly over the next few decades, at first primarily in
   the Russian empire and Eastern Europe, then in Western Europe and the
   Americas, China, and Japan. In the early years speakers of Esperanto
   kept in contact primarily through correspondence and periodicals, but
   in 1905 the first world congress of Esperanto speakers was held in
   Boulogne-sur-Mer, France. Since then world congresses have been held on
   five continents every year except during the two World Wars, and have
   been attended by up to 6000 people (typically 2000-3000).

   Esperanto has no official status in any country, but is an elective
   part of the curriculum in several state educational systems. There were
   plans at the beginning of the 20th century to establish Neutral
   Moresnet as the world's first Esperanto state, and the short-lived
   artificial island micronation of Rose Island used Esperanto as its
   official language in 1968. In China, there was talk in some circles
   after the 1911 Xinhai Revolution about officially replacing Chinese
   with Esperanto as a means to dramatically bring the country into the
   twentieth century, though this policy proved untenable. In the summer
   of 1924, the American Radio Relay League adopted Esperanto as its
   official international auxiliary language, and hoped that the language
   would be used by radio amateurs in international communications, but
   actual use of the language for radio communications was negligible.
   Esperanto is the working language of several non-profit international
   organizations such as the Sennacieca Asocio Tutmonda, but most others
   are specifically Esperanto organizations. The largest of these, the
   World Esperanto Association, has an official consultative relationship
   with the United Nations and UNESCO. The U.S. Army has published
   military phrasebooks in Esperanto, to be used in wargames by the enemy
   (i.e. non-U.S.) forces – an ironic contrast to the peace-loving
   idealism of the inventor Zamenhof.

Linguistic properties

Classification

   As a constructed language, Esperanto is not genealogically related to
   any ethnic language. Esperanto can be described as "a language
   lexically predominantly Romanic, morphologically intensively
   agglutinative and to a certain degree isolating in character". The
   phonology, grammar, vocabulary, and semantics are based on the western
   Indo-European languages. The phonemic inventory is essentially Slavic,
   as is much of the semantics, while the vocabulary derives primarily
   from the Romance languages, with a lesser contribution from Germanic.
   Pragmatics and other aspects of the language not specified by
   Zamenhof's original documents were influenced by the native languages
   of early speakers, primarily Russian, Polish, German, and French.

   Typologically, Esperanto has prepositions and a pragmatic word order
   that by default is Subject Verb Object and Adjective Noun. New words
   are formed through extensive prefixing and suffixing.

Phonology

   Esperanto has 5 vowels and 23 consonants, of which two are semivowels.
   It does not have tone. Stress is always on the penultimate vowel,
   unless a final vowel o is elided (which in practice occurs most in
   poetry). For example, familio (family) is [fa.mi.ˈli.o], but famili’ is
   [fa.mi.ˈli].

Consonants

   Bilabial Labio-
   dental Alveolar Post-
   alveolar Palatal Velar Glottal
   Plosive p b   t d     k g
   Nasal   m     n
   Tap       ɾ
   Fricative   f v s z ʃ ʒ   x   h
   Affricate     ʦ   ʧ ʤ
   Lateral approximant       l
   Approximant           j

   The sound /r/ is usually rolled, but may be tapped ([ɾ] in the IPA).
   The /v/ has a normative pronunciation like an English v, but is
   sometimes somewhere between a v and a w (IPA [ʋ]), depending on the
   language background of the speaker. A semivowel [u̯] normally occurs
   only in diphthongs after the vowels /a/ and /e/. Common (if debated)
   assimilation includes the pronunciation of /nk/ as [ŋk], as in English
   sink, and /kz/ as [gz], like the x in English example.

   A large number of possible consonant clusters can occur, up to three in
   initial position and four in medial position (for example, in instrui,
   to teach). Final clusters are uncommon except in foreign names, poetic
   elision of final o, and a very few basic words such as cent (hundred)
   and post (after).

Vowels

   Esperanto has the five vowels of Spanish and Swahili. No distinctions
   of length are made and there are no nasalized vowels.
         Front Back
   Close i     u
    Mid  e     o
   Open  a

   There are six falling diphthongs: uj, oj, ej, aj, aŭ, eŭ (/ui̯, oi̯,
   ei̯, ai̯, au̯, eu̯/).

   With only five vowels, a good deal of variation is tolerated. For
   instance, /e/ commonly ranges from [e] (French é) to [ɛ] (French è).
   The details often depend on the speaker's native language. A glottal
   stop may occur between adjacent vowels in some people's speech,
   especially when the two vowels are the same, as in heroo (hero) and
   praavo (great-grandfather).

Grammar

   Esperanto words are derived by stringing together prefixes, roots, and
   suffixes. This is very regular, so that people can create new words as
   they speak and be understood. Compound words are formed with
   modifier-first, head-final order, i.e. the same way as in English
   birdsong vs. songbird.

   The different parts of speech are marked by their own suffixes: all
   common nouns end in -o, all adjectives in -a, all derived adverbs in
   -e, and all verbs end in one of six tense and mood suffixes, such as
   present tense -as.

   Plural nouns end in -oj (pronounced "oy"), whereas direct objects end
   in -on. Plural direct objects end in -ojn (pronounced to rhyme with
   "coin"). Adjectives agree with their nouns; their endings are plural
   -aj (pronounced "eye"), direct-object -an, and plural direct-object
   -ajn (pronounced to rhyme with "fine").


                 Noun   Subject Object
               Singular   -o     -on
                Plural    -oj    -ojn


                                      Adjective Subject Object
                                      Singular    -a     -an
                                       Plural     -aj    -ajn

   The six verb inflections are three tenses and three moods. They are
   present tense -as, future tense -os, past tense -is, infinitive mood
   -i, conditional mood -us, and jussive mood -u. Verbs are not marked for
   person or number. For instance: kanti - to sing; mi kantas - I sing; mi
   kantis - I sang; mi kantos - I will sing.


              Verbal Tense    Suffix
              Present      -as (kantas)
              Past         -is (kantis)
              Future       -os (kantos)


                                       Verbal Mood    Suffix
                                       Infinitive  -i (kanti)
                                       Jussive     -u (kantu)
                                       Conditional -us (kantus)

   Word order is comparatively free: adjectives may precede or follow
   nouns, and subjects, verbs and objects (marked by the suffix -n) can
   occur in any order. However, the article la (the) and the
   demonstratives almost always come before the noun, and a preposition
   must come before it. Similarly, the negative ne (not) and conjunctions
   such as kaj (both, and) and ke (that) must precede the phrase or clause
   they introduce. In copular (A = B) clauses, word order is just as
   important as it is in English clauses like people are dogs vs. dogs are
   people.

Vocabulary

   The core vocabulary of Esperanto was defined by Lingvo internacia,
   published by Zamenhof in 1887. It comprised 900 roots, which could be
   expanded into the tens of thousands of words with prefixes, suffixes,
   and compounding. In 1894, Zamenhof published the first Esperanto
   dictionary, Universala Vortaro, with a larger set of roots. However,
   the rules of the language allowed speakers to borrow new roots as
   needed, recommending only that they look for the most international
   forms, and then derive related meanings from these.

   Since then, many words have been borrowed, primarily but not solely
   from the western European languages. Not all proposed borrowings catch
   on, but many do, especially technical and scientific terms. Terms for
   everyday use, on the other hand, are more likely to be derived from
   existing roots—for example komputilo (a computer) from komputi (to
   compute) plus the suffix -ilo (tool)—or to be covered by extending the
   meanings of existing words (for example muso (a mouse), now also means
   a computer input device, as in English). There are frequent debates
   among Esperanto speakers about whether a particular borrowing is
   justified or whether the need can be met by deriving from or extending
   the meaning of existing words.

   In addition to the root words and the rules for combining them, a
   learner of Esperanto must learn some idiomatic compounds that are not
   entirely straightforward. For example, eldoni, literally "to give out",
   is used for "to publish" (a calque of words in several European
   languages with the same derivation), and vortaro, literally "a
   collection of words", means "a glossary" or "a dictionary". Such forms
   are modeled after usage in the ethnic European languages, and speakers
   of other languages may find them illogical. Fossilized derivations
   inherited from Esperanto's source languages may be similarly obscure,
   such as the opaque connection the root word centralo "power station"
   has with centro "centre". Compounds with -um- are overtly arbitrary,
   and must be learned individually, as -um- has no defined meaning. It
   turns dekstren "to the right" into dekstrumen "clockwise", and komuna
   "common/shared" into komunumo "community", for example.

   Nevertheless, there are not nearly as many truly idiomatic or slang
   words in Esperanto as in ethnic languages, as these tend to make
   international communication difficult, working against Esperanto's main
   goal.

   In modern times, conscious attempts have been made by Esperantists to
   eliminate sexism in the language. One example of this is Riism, which
   is one among several propositions to modify the language in a
   non-sexist manner.

Writing system

   Esperanto is written with a modified version of the Latin alphabet,
   including six letters with diacritics: ĉ, ĝ, ĥ, ĵ, ŝ and ŭ (that is, c,
   g, h, j, s circumflex, and u breve). The alphabet does not include the
   letters q, w, x, y except in unassimilated foreign names.

   The 28-letter alphabet is:

        a b c ĉ d e f g ĝ h ĥ i j ĵ k l m n o p r s ŝ t u ŭ v z

   All letters are pronounced approximately as their lower-case
   equivalents in the IPA, with the exception of c and the accented
   letters:
     Letter    Pronunciation
        c           [ʦ]
        ĉ           [ʧ]
        ĝ           [ʤ]
        ĥ           [x]
        ĵ           [ʒ]
        ŝ           [ʃ]
       ŭ
   (as aŭ, eŭ)     [u̯]

   Two ASCII-compatible writing conventions are in use. These substitute
   digraphs for the accented letters. The original "h-convention" (ch, gh,
   hh, jh, sh, u) is based on English 'ch' and 'sh', while a more recent "
   x-convention" (cx, gx, hx, jx, sx, ux) is useful for alphabetic word
   sorting on a computer (cx comes correctly after cu, sx after sv, etc.)
   as well as for simple conversion back into the standard orthography.
   See Esperanta klavaro, keyboard layout, Latin-3 and Unicode.

   Esperanto has been a 'clear' language for Morse code communication
   since the 1920s, and codes exist for all accented Esperanto characters.

Useful phrases

   Here are some useful Esperanto phrases, with IPA transcriptions:
     * Hello: Saluton /sa.ˈlu.ton/
     * What is your name?:

                Kiel vi nomiĝas? /ˈki.el vi no.ˈmi.ʤas/

     * My name is ... :

                Mi nomiĝas ... /mi no.ˈmi.ʤas .../

     * How much?: Kiom? /ˈki.om/
     * Here you are: Jen /jen/
     * Do you speak Esperanto?: Ĉu vi parolas Esperanton? /ˈʧu vi
       pa.ˈro.las es.pe.ˈran.ton/
     * I don't understand you: Mi ne komprenas vin [mi ˈne kom.ˈpre.nas
       vin/
     * I like this one:

                Mi ŝatas tiun ĉi /mi ˈʃat.as ˈti.un ˈʧi/
                Ĉi tiu plaĉas al mi /ʧi ˈti.u ˈpla.ʧas al ˈmi/

     * Thank you: Dankon /ˈdan.kon/
     * You're welcome: Ne dankinde /ˈne dan.ˈkin.de/
     * Please: Bonvolu /bon.ˈvo.lu/
     * Here's to your health: Je via sano /je ˈvi.a ˈsa.no/
     * Bless you!/Gesundheit!: Sanon! /ˈsa.non/
     * Okay: Bone /ˈbo.ne/
     * It is a nice day: Estas bela tago /ˈes.tas ˈbe.la ˈta.go/
     * I love you: Mi amas vin /mi ˈam.as vin/
     * Goodbye:

                Ĝis (la) revido /ˈʤis (la) re.ˈvid.o/
                Ĝis (la)! /ˈʤis (la)/

     * Peace: Pacon [ˈpa.tson/
     * I would like a [one] beer, please: Unu bieron, mi petas. /ˈu.nu
       bi.ˈe.ron mi ˈpe.tas/
     * What is that?: "Kio estas tio?"
     * That is...: "Tio estas..."

The Esperanto speaker community

Geography and demography

   Esperanto speakers are more numerous in Europe and East Asia than in
   the Americas, Africa, and Oceania, and more numerous in urban than in
   rural areas. Esperanto is particularly prevalent in the northern and
   eastern countries of Europe; in China, Korea, Japan, and Iran within
   Asia; in Brazil, Argentina, and Mexico in the Americas; and in Togo and
   Madagascar in Africa.

   An estimate of the number of Esperanto speakers was made by Sidney S.
   Culbert, a retired psychology professor of the University of Washington
   and a longtime Esperantist, who tracked down and tested Esperanto
   speakers in sample areas of dozens of countries over a period of twenty
   years. Culbert concluded that between one and two million people speak
   Esperanto at Foreign Service Level 3, "professionally proficient" (able
   to communicate moderately complex ideas without hesitation, and to
   follow speeches, radio broadcasts, etc.). Culbert's estimate was not
   made for Esperanto alone, but formed part of his listing of estimates
   for all languages of over 1 million speakers, published annually in the
   World Almanac and Book of Facts. Culbert's most detailed account of his
   methodology is found in a 1989 letter to David Wolff. Since Culbert
   never published detailed intermediate results for particular countries
   and regions, it is difficult to independently gauge the accuracy of his
   results.

   In the Almanac, his estimates for numbers of language speakers were
   rounded to the nearest million, thus the number for Esperanto speakers
   is shown as 2 million. This latter figure appears in Ethnologue.
   Assuming that this figure is accurate, that means that about 0.03% of
   the world's population speaks the language. This falls short of
   Zamenhof's goal of a universal language, but it represents a level of
   popularity unmatched by any other constructed language. Ethnologue also
   states that there are 200 to 2000 native Esperanto speakers
   (denaskuloj), who have learned the language from birth from their
   Esperanto-speaking parents (this happens when Esperanto is the family
   language in an international family or sometimes in a family of devoted
   Esperantists).

   Marcus Sikosek has challenged this figure of 1.6 million as
   exaggerated. Sikosek estimated that even if Esperanto speakers were
   evenly distributed, assuming one million Esperanto speakers worldwide
   would lead one to expect about 180 in the city of Cologne. Sikosek
   finds only 30 fluent speakers in that city, and similarly smaller than
   expected figures in several other places thought to have a
   larger-than-average concentration of Esperanto speakers. He also notes
   that there are a total of about 20,000 members of the various Esperanto
   organizations (other estimates are higher). Though there are
   undoubtedly many Esperanto speakers who are not members of any
   Esperanto organization, he thinks it unlikely that there are fifty
   times more speakers than organization members. Others think such a
   ratio between members of the organized Esperanto movement and speakers
   of the language is not unlikely.

   The Finnish linguist Jouko Lindstedt, an expert on native-born
   Esperanto speakers, presented the following scheme to show the overall
   proportions of language capabilities within the Esperanto community:
     * 1,000 have Esperanto as their native language
     * 10,000 speak it fluently
     * 100,000 can use it actively
     * 1,000,000 understand a large amount passively
     * 10,000,000 have studied it to some extent at some time.

   In the absence of Dr. Culbert's detailed sampling data, or any other
   census data, it is impossible to state the number of speakers with
   certainty. Few observers, probably, would challenge the following
   statement from the website of the World Esperanto Association:

          Numbers of textbooks sold and membership of local societies put
          the number of people with some knowledge of the language in the
          hundreds of thousands and possibly millions.

Culture

   Esperanto is often used to access an international culture, including a
   large corpus of original as well as translated literature. There are
   over 25,000 Esperanto books (originals and translations) as well as
   over a hundred regularly distributed Esperanto magazines. Many
   Esperanto speakers use the language for free travel throughout the
   world using the Pasporta Servo. Others like the idea of having pen pals
   in many countries around the world using services like the Esperanto
   Pen Pal Service. Every year, 1500-3000 Esperanto speakers meet for the
   World Congress of Esperanto (Universala Kongreso de Esperanto).

   Historically most of the music published in Esperanto has been in
   various folk traditions; in recent decades more rock and other modern
   genres have appeared.

   To some extent there are also shared traditions, like the Zamenhof Day,
   and shared behaviour patterns, like avoiding the usage of one's
   national language at Esperanto meetings unless there is good reason for
   its use.

   Two full-length feature films have been produced with dialogue entirely
   in Esperanto, namely Angoroj in 1964 and Incubus starring William
   Shatner in 1965. Other amateur productions have been made, such as a
   dramatisation of the novel Gerda Malaperis (Gerda Has Disappeared). A
   number of "mainstream" films in national languages have used Esperanto
   in some way, such as Gattaca.

   Esperanto is frequently criticized for "having no culture". Proponents
   observe that Esperanto is culturally neutral by design, as it was
   intended to be a facilitator between cultures, not to be the carrier of
   any one culture. (See Esperanto as an international language.)

Science

   Nearly from the beginning Esperanto was used for scientific papers; the
   Fundamenta Krestomatio of 1903 contains a section El la vivo kaj
   sciencoj (from life and sciences). A few scientists, such as Maurice
   Fréchet, have published part of their work in Esperanto. In articles on
   interlinguistics the use of Esperanto is not uncommon.

   Esperanto is the first language for teaching and administration of the
   International Academy of Sciences San Marino, which is sometimes called
   an "Esperanto University", although it does not teach the language, but
   in the language. It is not to be confused with the Akademio de
   Esperanto (Academy of Esperanto).

Goals of the Esperanto movement

   Zamenhof's intention was to create an easy-to-learn language to foster
   international understanding. It was to serve as an international
   auxiliary language, that is, as a universal second language, not to
   replace ethnic languages. This goal was widely shared among Esperanto
   speakers in the early decades of the movement. Later, Esperanto
   speakers began to see the language and the culture that had grown up
   around it as ends in themselves, even if Esperanto is never adopted by
   the United Nations or other international organizations.

   Those Esperanto speakers who want to see Esperanto adopted officially
   or on a large scale worldwide are commonly called finvenkistoj, from
   fina venko, meaning "final victory". Those who focus on the intrinsic
   value of the language are commonly called raŭmistoj, from Rauma,
   Finland, where a declaration on the near-term unlikelihood of the "fina
   venko" and the value of Esperanto culture was made at the International
   Youth Congress in 1980. These categories are, however, not mutually
   exclusive. (See Finvenkismo)

   The Prague Manifesto (1996) presents the views of the mainstream of the
   Esperanto movement and of its main organisation, the World Esperanto
   Association ( UEA).

Symbols and flags

   In 1893, C. Rjabinis and P. Deullin designed and manufactured a lapel
   pin for Esperantists to identify each other. The design was a circular
   pin with a white background and a five pointed green star. The theme of
   the design was the hope of the five continents being united by a common
   language.

   The earliest flag, and the one most commonly used today, features a
   green five-pointed star against a white canton, upon a field of green.
   In 1905, delegates to the first conference of Esperantists at
   Boulogne-sur-Mer, unanimously approved a version, differing from the
   modern only by the superimposition of an "E" over the green star. Other
   variants include that for Christian Esperantists, with a white
   Christian cross superimposed upon the green star, and that for
   Leftists, with the colour of the field changed from green to red.

   In 1997, a second flag design was chosen in a contest by the UEA for
   the first centennial of the language. It featured a white background
   with two stylised curved "E"s facing each other. Dubbed the "jubilea
   simbolo" (jubilee symbol) , it attracted criticism from some
   Esperantists, who dubbed it "melono" (melon) because of the design's
   eliptical shape. It later fell into disuse, and the traditional flag,
   known as "verda stelo" (green star), is still in use today.

Esperanto and education

   Relatively few schools teach Esperanto officially outside of China,
   Hungary, and Bulgaria; the majority of Esperanto speakers continue to
   learn the language through self-directed study or correspondence
   courses. Several Esperanto paper correspondence courses were early on
   adapted to e-mail and taught by corps of volunteer instructors. In more
   recent years, teaching websites like lernu! have become popular.
   Various educators have estimated that Esperanto can be learned in
   anywhere from one quarter to one twentieth the amount of time required
   for other languages. Some argue, however, that this is only true for
   native speakers of Western European languages.

   Claude Piron, a psychologist formerly at the University of Geneva and
   Chinese-English-Russian-Spanish translator for the United Nations,
   argued that it is easier to think clearly in Esperanto than in many
   ethnic languages (see Sapir-Whorf hypothesis for an explanation on this
   theory). "Esperanto relies entirely on innate reflexes [and] differs
   from all other languages in that you can always trust your natural
   tendency to generalize patterns. [...] The same neuropsychological law
   [— called by] Jean Piaget generalizing assimilation — applies to word
   formation as well as to grammar."

   Several research studies demonstrate that studying Esperanto before
   another foreign language speeds and improves learning the other
   language. This is presumably because learning subsequent foreign
   languages is easier than learning one's first, while the use of a
   grammatically simple and culturally flexible auxiliary language like
   Esperanto lessens the first-language learning hurdle. In one study, a
   group of European high school students studied Esperanto for one year,
   then French for three years, and ended up with a significantly better
   command of French than a control group, who studied French for all four
   years. Similar results were found when the second language was
   Japanese, or when the course of study was reduced to two years, of
   which six months was spent learning Esperanto. See Propaedeutic value
   of Esperanto for other relevant studies.

Esperanto and religion

Homaranismo

   LL Zamenhof promoted a religion of his own called Homaranismo, but was
   concerned this could taint his earlier work in establishing Esperanto.
   He proposed abandoning his public role as an Esperantist to avoid
   confusion.

Oomoto

   The Oomoto religion encourages the use of Esperanto among their
   followers and includes Zamenhof as one of its deified spirits.

Bahá'í

   The Bahá'í Faith encourages the use of an auxiliary international
   language, and, while endorsing no specific language, sees Esperanto as
   having great potential in this role.

   Lidja Zamenhof, daughter of Esperanto's founder, became a Bahá'í.

   Various volumes of the Bahá'í scriptures and other Baha'i books have
   been translated into Esperanto.

   It should be noted that before 1981 (the Bahá'í interest in Esperanto
   goes back over a century), the Islamic Republic of Iran through the
   mullahs had also encouraged the use of Esperanto.

Spiritism

   Esperanto is also actively promoted, at least in Brazil, by followers
   of Spiritism. The Brazilian Spiritist Federation publishes Esperanto
   coursebooks, translations of Spiritism's basic books and encourages
   Spiritists to become Esperantists.

Bible translations

   The first translation of the Bible into Esperanto was a translation of
   the Tanakh or Old Testament done by L. L. Zamenhof. The translation was
   reviewed and compared with other languages' translations of the Bible
   by a group of British clergy and scholars before publishing it at the
   British and Foreign Bible Society in 1910. In 1926 this was published
   along with a New Testament translation, in an edition commonly called
   the "Londona Biblio". In the 1960s, Internacia Asocio de Bibliistoj kaj
   Orientalistoj tried to organize a new, ecumenical Esperanto Bible
   version. Since then, the Dutch Lutheran pastor Gerrit Berveling has
   translated the Deuterocanonical or apocryphal books in addition to new
   translations of the Gospels, some of the New Testament epistles, and
   some books of the Tanakh or Old Testament; these have been published in
   various separate booklets, or serialized in Dia Regno, but the
   Deuterocanonical books appeared in a recent new edition of the Londona
   Bilbio.

Christianity

     * IKUE - Internacia Katolika Unuiĝo Esperantista - the International
       Union of Catholic Esperantists.
     * Roman Catholic popes (including at least John Paul II and Benedict
       XVI) have occasionally used Esperanto in their multilingual urbi et
       orbi blessings.
     * KELI - Kristana Esperantista Ligo Internacia - the International
       Christian Esperantists League. KELI was formed early in the history
       of Esperanto, and works in cooperation with IKUE
     * An issue of "The Friend" describes the activities of the Quaker
       Esperanto Society.
     * There are instances of Christian apologists and teachers who use
       Esperanto as a medium. Nigerian Pastor Bayo Afolaranmi's " Spirita
       nutraĵo" (spiritual food) Yahoo mailing list, for example, has
       hosted weekly messages since 2003.

Criticism and modifications of Esperanto

   Common criticisms of the language are that its vocabulary and grammar
   are too European; that its vocabulary, accented letters, and grammar
   are not Western European enough (a critique addressed by Ido, Novial
   and Interlingua); that it is sexist, looks and sounds artificial, or
   has failed to meet the expectation that all people would one day use it
   as a second language.

   Finally, proponents are often seen as exaggerating the success of
   Esperanto. For example, many observers question how a stable population
   of more than several thousand speakers can produce a modest and
   declining number of recent publications.

   Though Esperanto itself has changed little since the publication of the
   Fundamento de Esperanto ("Foundation of Esperanto"), a number of reform
   projects have been proposed over the years, starting with Zamenhof's
   proposals in 1894 and Ido in 1907. Several later constructed languages,
   such as Fasile, were based on Esperanto.

Esperanto in popular culture

   Esperanto has been used in a number of films and novels. Typically,
   this is done either to add the exoticness of a foreign language without
   representing any particular ethnicity, or to avoid going to the trouble
   of inventing a new language. Filmmaker Charlie Chaplin used Esperanto
   for signage on storefronts and buildings in his 1940 classic The Great
   Dictator. In science fiction, Esperanto is often used to represent a
   future in which there is a more universally spoken language than exists
   today. Examples of this include the Riverworld series by Philip José
   Farmer, the UK sci-fi sitcom Red Dwarf, the Stainless Steel Rat series
   by Harry Harrison, and the 1997 sci-fi drama Gattaca. It is also seen
   and heard in the 2004 vampire film Blade Trinity.

   There are two instances of feature films being entirely performed in
   Esperanto. Angoroj, (Esperanto for "Agonies") 1964, was the first
   feature film to be produced entirely in Esperanto and Incubus (with
   English and French subtitles), a 1965 black and white horror film,
   directed by Leslie Stevens and starring a pre- Star Trek William
   Shatner. The earliest film to incorporate Esperanto was the thriller
   "State Secret" 1950, with Douglas Fairbanks Jr., who starred as an
   American surgeon contacted by the authorities of Vosnia, an Eastern
   European dictatorship, to perform a rare operation on their leader. The
   language spoken in "Vosnia" is Esperanto. The earliest film (not of
   feature length, however) to utilize the language was titled Antaŭen!
   (Onwards!), a silent Esperanto publicity film before World War II.

   More rarely, it is used jokingly, referred to as a " geek language",
   such as the usage seen on occasion in the animated series Danny
   Phantom, where the only characters who speak it are either
   self-described "geeks", or a particular ghost (who is apparently more
   fluent in the language than the human characters, as evidenced by the
   difficulty Tucker Foley had in translating said ghost's comments into
   English).

   The name of the beverage Yakult is derived from jahurto, an archaic
   form of the Esperanto for " yoghurt" (the modern word is jogurto).

   Esperanto has also been cited as a possible inspiration for George
   Orwell's Newspeak. Orwell had been exposed to Esperanto in 1927 when
   living in Paris with his aunt Nellie Limouzin, who was then living with
   Eugène Lanti, a prominent Esperantist. Esperanto was the language of
   the house, and Orwell, who had come to Paris in part to improve his
   French, was obliged to find other lodging.

   The musician credits for Blood and Chocolate, a 1986 album by Elvis
   Costello & the Attractions, were written in Esperanto.

   Composer David Gaines' (b. 1961) Symphony No. 1 is subtitled
   "Esperanto", and features a mezzo-soprano soloist singing in Esperanto.
   It has been recorded by the Moravian Philharmonic.

   The opening theme to Final Fantasy XI, "FFXI Opening Theme" ~Legend
   -The Crystal Theme, Memory of the People, Memoro de la Ŝtono, Memory of
   the Wind~ was sung in Esperanto.

   Retrieved from " http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto"
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   with only minor checks and changes (see www.wikipedia.org for details
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