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Esperanto: Languages
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Esperanto was developed in the late 1870s and early 1880s by ophthalmologist Dr. Ludovic Lazarus Zamenhof, an Ashkenazi Jew from Bialystok, now in Poland and previously in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, but at the time part of the Russian Empire. 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 in different countries every year, save for during the two World Wars. Since the Second World War, they have been attended by an average of over 2000 people, and by up to 6000.
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Esperanto’s development is scrutinised by a body called the Academy of Esperanto. The Academy’s task is to develop the language within the framework of the Fundamento, the basis established by Zamenhof. Decisions made by the Academy are not binding, but resemble guidelines that have the character of well-considered recommendations. Actually, the Academy often either fails to keep pace with Esperanto’s development or is in some cases incapable of providing unanimous recommendations because of internal differences.
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Esperanto is a constructed language, it was invented in the late 19th century by Lejzer Ludwig Zamenhof (1889). The word itself means 'one who hopes' and Zamenhof used it as his pseudonym for his first textbook. There are more than a thousand constructed languages, from Tolkein's Elvish, through Klingon, to Basic English, and the most widely spoken one - Bahas Indonesia. A small portion of these planned languages were intended for international use, among them the most successful one has been Esperanto.
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As previously mentioned, Esperanto is often characterised as an "artificial language", as opposed to other languages, which are perceived to be "natural". But since the victory of the nation-state principle, at the very latest, a differentiation between "artificial" and "natural" languages is hardly tenable. The reason is that forces of standardisation exert great pressure on the language of any national state. Languages like standard German or French have for centuries been standardised and regulated through law and by decree as well as by the mass media. Authors, story-tellers and inventive individuals from all social strata exert a direct and conscious influence on language. Criteria for what is "natural" and "artificial" become blurred.
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As a constructed language, Esperanto is not genealogically related to any ethnic language. It has been described as "a language lexically predominantly Romanic, morphologically intensively agglutinative and to a certain degree isolating in character".[8] 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.
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Esperanto is a language introduced in 1887 by Dr. L.L. Zamenhof after years of development. He proposed Esperanto as a second language that would allow people who speak different native languages to communicate, yet at the same time retain their own languages and cultural identities. Esperanto doesn’t replace anyone’s language but simply serves as a common second language. Esperanto can be learned in much less time than any other language. (Some say that it is four times easier).
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