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Esperanto: Esperanto Speakers
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The total number of Esperanto speakers is a subject of much debate; estimates range from zero to Avogadro's number. The vast majority of speakers learned it as a second language, but there is a small number of "native" Esperanto speakers who, because of the language's simplicity, were able to achieve verbal fluency while still in the womb.
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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 [4]. 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.
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The proportion of anarchists in the Esperanto movement is no greater than in the population at large, at least in Germany Anarchists’ position in the Esperanto movement on the whole is marginal. Mutual misgivings between Esperanto-speaking anarchists on the one hand, and apolitical/"bourgeois" Esperanto-speakers on the other hand complicate relations. Few, if any, libertarian and anarchist Esperantists are interested in an exclusive or very extensive use of the language within the movement while it is still not widespread beyond. Esperanto could... gain true acceptance as an additional means of communication within the movement if there were a greater understanding of the way languages and language choice are used as tools by states and economic interests, and also as criteria of social selection and exclusion.
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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. [8] Some argue... that this is only true for native speakers of Western European languages. [9] Claude Piron, a psychologist formerly at the University of Geneva and Chinese-English-Russian-Spanish translator for the United Nations, argued that Esperanto is far more "brain friendly" than many ethnic languages. "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."[10]
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Some key persons within the Esperanto movement have lamented how few of the speakers then progress to a high level of fluency. Most notably, the author Julio Baghy critiqued mediocre Esperantists in his ironic poem Estas mi Esperantisto ("I am an Esperantist"). Also the author Kazimierz Bein, while attending a conference at which it was generally agreed that everyone should learn Esperanto, remarked that the first who ought to learn it were the Esperantists themselves.
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The vocabulary of Esperanto comes mainly from Latin by way of Greek, and Romance and Germanic languages. As a result, most of its words look familiar to speakers of Western European languages or to anyone who knows a Romance language. Here are the kinship terms of Esperanto:
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Esperanto Speakers