History UsefulNotes / EsperantoTheUniversalLanguage

[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto Esperanto]] is a {{Conlang}} made by L. L. Zamenhof in 1887 designed to be an easy-to-learn language that would help with communication between countries of different languages and maybe even create world peace. The vast majority of the vocabulary is based on European roots, about 2/3 being Latinate derivations from French and about 1/3 being Germanic derivations from English and German, with only a handful of derivations from other sources; whether this makes it appreciably more difficult for non-Europeans to learn is a topic of much discussion among fluent Esperantists, many of whom have non-European mother tongues. Sadly, it has yet to achieve the full extent of Zamenhof's ambitions, thus spawning occasional mockery in modern media[[note]]and murderous rage on the part of those who oppose movements that attempt to bridge social gaps; [[UsefulNotes/NaziGermany the Nazis]] outlawed Esperanto and even sent some of its speakers to the camps.[[/note]]. Even then, it's still a thriving language within its own media, and there are a few people around the world who have grown up with Esperanto as a first language.[[note]]in addition to a natural language, obviously[[/note]] Some stories set in TheFuture use Esperanto as if it had become the main language. It's also occasionally used AsLongAsItSoundsForeign.

Esperanto has the advantage of being more regular than naturally-evolved languages. It has only [[https://web.archive.org/web/20060517004542/http://donh.best.vwh.net/Esperanto/rules.html 16 grammatical rules]] at base (though it also has other [[http://jbr.me.uk/ranto/y.html folds and wrinkles]] at higher levels), and it never deviates from those rules; also, each letter is pronounced one way and one way only, each word is spelled exactly as it's pronounced, and there are no silent letters. By contrast, English (like all natural languages) is full of irregularity, such as all kinds of weird, inconsistent spelling and grammar rules that make it much harder to learn than it should be. In addition, Esperanto words are much more easily creatable, using prefixes and suffixes around the root word to handily morph words in any way necessary, thus making sentences more concise and language more literal. (Opinions vary on the subject of how colorful language equivalents have solidly found their way into the language, morphable like any other word.) Written Esperanto presents a bit of a problem in the digital age, since 6 letters of the Esperanto alphabet -- ĉ, ĝ, ĥ, ĵ, ŝ, and ŭ -- don't appear in the standard ASCII/ANSI character set; many authors choose to simply write the letter without the hat on it and put an x afterward, like so: cx, gx, hx, jx, sx, ux.[[note]]Eventually, even Zamenhof decided that these funny-looking letters were a bad idea, and unsuccessfully [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reformed_Esperanto tried to get rid of them.]][[/note]] However, with the widespread adoption of Unicode in digital environments today, this difficulty is much reduced; Esperanto diacritics are included in that character set.

* ''Machinima/RedVsBlue'' has Simmons learning Esperanto mistaking it for Spanish, with the others noting it is a dead language in the show's futuristic setting (like [[Franchise/{{Halo}} its source material]], the show is set in the 26th century).

* At Wiki/RationalWiki, [[https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Category:Esperanto several articles]] are available in Esperanto translations, including the article on the language itself.

A few Wiki/TVTropes pages are available in Esperanto translations, including this very page. To see the index, go [[Eo/VikiajTropoj here]].

** Although in ''The Stainless Steel Rat for President'' he subverts this in having the inhabitants of a Spanish-speaking planet being completely unable to understand what Jim [=DiGriz=] is saying to his wife in Esperanto. And that despite so much of the Esperanto vocabulary coming from Latin, the root of Romance languages like Spanish.

* ''Radio/TheShadow'' novel ''Malmordo'' has the title villain's name coming from bad Esperanto, and his international gang speaks the language. The Shadow, of course, is fluent in Esperanto (and UsefulNotes/{{Romani}}, the other non-English language important in the story.)

* In ''Anime/{{RahXephon}}'' the TERRA organization's name is an [[FunWithAcronyms acronym]] for "Tereno Empireo Rapidmova Reakcii Armeo", which is ''supposed'' to be Esperanto for "Earth Empire Rapid Response Army". [[MyHovercraftIsFullOfEels Except "Tereno" means "terrain", "Empireo" and "Rapidmova" are both nonsense, and "Reakcii" means "to react".]] (They got "Armeo" right, though.) In proper Esperanto, the name should be "Rapid-responda Armeo de la Tera Imperio"...which, unfortunately, kills the acronym.

** The nearly-lost 1966 ReligiousHorror film ''Incubus'' starred Creator/WilliamShatner and was produced by most of the first season ''Series/TheOuterLimits1963'' production team. Rather infamously, it was filmed entirely in (poorly written and pronounced) Esperanto to sound more exotic, as well as to supposedly appeal to a broad market given Esperanto's international reach, [[[GoldenMeanFallacy only for it to tank as not enough people in any general population speak it]]. Amusingly, Creator/GeneRoddenberry became a fan of Esperanto partly due to Shatner's attachment to the film, and had briefly considered filming ''Franchise/StarTrek'' in the language -- [[WhatCouldHaveBeen lord knows how well that would've gone over]].

** The 1965 horror film ''Incubus'' starred Creator/WilliamShatner and was produced by most of the first season ''Series/TheOuterLimits1963'' production team; it was filmed entirely in (poorly written and pronounced) Esperanto to sound more exotic.

* ''Fanfic/RocketshipVoyager''. When Tom Paris first meets HalfHumanHybrid B'Elanna Torres, he introduces himself in Esperanto, which is used as a lingua franca by the Tri-World Federation. [[SwitchToEnglish However she replies]] in [[PlanetTerra Terran]]-English, having been [[RaisedCatholic raised in a Catholic convent]] on Venus.

Esperanto is a {{Conlang}} made by L. L. Zamenhof in 1887 designed to be an easy-to-learn language that would help with communication between countries of different languages and maybe even create world peace. The vast majority of the vocabulary is based on European roots, about 2/3 being Latinate derivations from French and about 1/3 being Germanic derivations from English and German, with only a handful of derivations from other sources; whether this makes it appreciably more difficult for non-Europeans to learn is a topic of much discussion among fluent Esperantists, many of whom have non-European mother tongues. Sadly, it has yet to achieve the full extent of Zamenhof's ambitions, thus spawning occasional mockery in modern media[[note]]and murderous rage on the part of those who oppose movements that attempt to bridge social gaps; [[UsefulNotes/NaziGermany the Nazis]] outlawed Esperanto and even sent some of its speakers to the camps.[[/note]]. Even then, it's still a thriving language within its own media, and there are a few people around the world who have grown up with Esperanto as a first language.[[note]]in addition to a natural language, obviously[[/note]] Some stories set in TheFuture use Esperanto as if it had become the main language. It's also occasionally used AsLongAsItSoundsForeign.

* The ''WesternAnimation/SpongebobSquarepants'' comic book saga "Showdown at the Shady Shoals" features the City of Urbo, where everyone speaks Esperanto.

* A ComicBook/CaptainAmerica antagonist, Flagsmasher, was described as being fluent in multiple languages including Esperanto, having grown up the son of a career diplomat posted in numerous countries.

* The artwork for Music/{{Radiohead}}'s ''Music/OKComputer'' album (or, if you like, Bone Komputilo) includes a few phrases in Esperanto, including "danĝera najbaro" (dangerous neighbor/hood).

* ''[[TenJarojnPoste 10 Jarojn Poste]]'', an independently published science fiction comic book from 1984, is written almost entirely in Esperanto.

* ''VideoGame/{{Touhou}}''. As shown in [[spoiler:Marisa B's]] Good Ending in ''Embodiment Of Scarlet Devil'', [[spoiler:some of Patchouli's books]] are written in Esperanto.

[[folder:Web Comics]]

-->--[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Espero La Espero]]

* The Catholic end-times novel ''[[Literature/LordoftheWorld Lord of the World]]'' claims that, after [[DirtyCommunists Marxists take over the world]], they’ll destroy the heritages of the nations by replacing their languages with Esperanto. Despite this, everyone still speaks English, and this isn’t just because of TranslationConvention. The book was written a few years after the Esperantist community suffered a major schism (leading to the creation of Ido) that scuttled any hopes of an international language actually being adopted worldwide, but [[{{Zeerust}} no one could have predicted that at the time]]. Though the author was a Catholic priest, so his objection seems to have actually been that a perfectly good language with no native speakers had been used for international communication for centuries: [[GratuitousLatin Latin]].

* Creator/IsaacAsimov wrote a short story, "Homo Sol", about humanity being inducted into a galactic [[TheFederation federation]]. The welcome message from their diplomats is delivered in Esperanto.

Esperanto is a {{Conlang}} made by L. L. Zamenhof in 1887 designed to be an easy-to-learn language that would help with communication between countries of different languages and maybe even create world peace. The vast majority of the vocabulary is based on Latinate roots; whether this makes it appreciably more difficult for non-Europeans to learn is a topic of much discussion among fluent Esperantists, many of whom have non-European mother tongues. Sadly, it has yet to achieve the full extent of Zamenhof's ambitions, thus spawning occasional mockery in modern media[[note]]and murderous rage on the part of those who oppose movements that attempt to bridge social gaps; [[UsefulNotes/NaziGermany the Nazis]] outlawed Esperanto and even sent some of its speakers to the camps.[[/note]]. Even then, it's still a thriving language within its own media, and there are a few people around the world who have grown up with Esperanto as a first language.[[note]]in addition to a natural language, obviously[[/note]] Some stories set in TheFuture use Esperanto as if it had become the main language. It's also occasionally used AsLongAsItSoundsForeign.

Esperanto has the advantage of being more regular than naturally-evolved languages. It has only [[https://web.archive.org/web/20060517004542/http://donh.best.vwh.net/Esperanto/rules.html 16 grammatical rules]] at base (though it also has other [[http://jbr.me.uk/ranto/y.html folds and wrinkles]] at higher levels), and it never deviates from those rules; also, each letter is pronounced one way and one way only, each word is spelled exactly as it's pronounced, and there are no silent letters. By contrast, English (unlike most national languages) is full of all kinds of weird, inconsistent spelling and grammar rules that make it much harder to learn than it should be. In addition, Esperanto words are much more easily creatable, using prefixes and suffixes around the root word to handily morph words in any way necessary, thus making sentences more concise and language more literal. (Opinions vary on the subject of how colorful language equivalents have solidly found their way into the language, morphable like any other word.) Written Esperanto presents a bit of a problem in the digital age, since 6 letters of the Esperanto alphabet -- ĉ, ĝ, ĥ, ĵ, ŝ, and ŭ -- don't appear in the standard ASCII/ANSI character set; many authors choose to simply write the letter without the hat on it and put an x afterward, like so: cx, gx, hx, jx, sx, ux.[[note]]Eventually, even Zamenhof decided that these funny-looking letters were a bad idea, and unsuccessfully [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reformed_Esperanto tried to get rid of them.]][[/note]] However, with the widespread adoption of Unicode in digital environments today, this difficulty is much reduced; Esperanto diacritics are included in that character set.

* ''Fanfic/RocketshipVoyager''. When Tom Paris first meets HalfHumanHybrid B'Elanna Torres, he introduces himself in Esperanto, which is used as a lingua franca by the Tri-World Federation. However she replies in [[PlanetTerra Terran]]-English, having been [[RaisedCatholic raised in a Catholic convent]] on Venus.

* The artwork for {{Radiohead}}'s ''Music/OKComputer'' album (or, if you like, Bone Komputilo) includes a few phrases in Esperanto, including "danĝera najbaro" (dangerous neighbor/hood).

* In Scott Meyer's ''[[Literature/{{Magic20}} Off to Be the Wizard]]'', all [[PowersArePrograms spells]] used by the "wizards" are activated with phrases in a bastardized version of Esperanto. Basically, they know the words but not the grammar, substituting English grammar instead. When asked by Martin why they don't use Latin, like most stories about magic, Phillip explains that a good number of locals (in 12th century England) understand at least some Latin. The most commonly-used spell is "flugi" ("fly"), which does exactly what you'd expect.

Esperanto has the advantage of being more regular than naturally-evolved languages. It has only [[https://web.archive.org/web/20060517004542/http://donh.best.vwh.net/Esperanto/rules.html 16 grammatical rules]] at base (though it also has other [[http://jbr.me.uk/ranto/y.html folds and wrinkles]] at higher levels), and it never deviates from those rules; also, each letter is pronounced one way and one way only, each word is spelled exactly as it's pronounced, and there are no silent letters. By contrast, English (unlike most national languages) is full of all kinds of weird, inconsistent spelling and grammar rules that make it much harder to learn than it should be. In addition, Esperanto words are much more easily creatable, using prefixes and suffixes around the root word to handily morph words in any way necessary, thus making sentences more concise and language more literal. (Opinions vary on the subject of how colorful language equivalents have solidly found their way into the language, morphable like any other word.) Written Esperanto presents a bit of a problem in the digital age, since 6 letters of the Esperanto alphabet -- ĉ, ĝ, ĥ, ĵ, ŝ, and ŭ -- don't appear in the standard ASCII/ANSI character set; many authors choose to simply write the letter without the hat on it and put an x afterward, like so: cx, gx, hx, jx, sx, ux.[[note]]Eventually, even Esperanto's creator decided that these funny-looking letters were a bad idea, and unsuccessfully [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reformed_Esperanto tried to get rid of them.]][[/note]] However, with the widespread adoption of Unicode in digital environments today, this difficulty is much reduced; Esperanto diacritics are included in that character set.

Esperanto has the advantage of being more regular than naturally-evolved languages. It has only [[https://web.archive.org/web/20060517004542/http://donh.best.vwh.net/Esperanto/rules.html 16 grammatical rules]] at base (though it also has other [[http://jbr.me.uk/ranto/y.html folds and wrinkles]] at higher levels), and it never deviates from those rules; also, each letter is pronounced one way and one way only, each word is spelled exactly as it's pronounced, and there are no silent letters. By contrast, English (unlike most national languages) is full of all kinds of weird, inconsistent spelling and grammar rules that make it much harder to learn than it should be. In addition, Esperanto words are much more easily creatable, using prefixes and suffixes around the root word to handily morph words in any way necessary, thus making sentences more concise and language more literal. (Opinions vary on the subject of how colorful language equivalents have solidly found their way into the language, morphable like any other word.) Written Esperanto presents a bit of a problem in the digital age, since 6 letters of the Esperanto alphabet -- ĉ ĝ ĥ ĵ ŝ and ŭ -- don't appear in the standard ASCII/ANSI character set; many authors choose to simply write the letter without the hat on it and put an x afterward, like so: ĉ, ĝ, ĥ, ĵ, ŝ, ŭ.[[note]]Eventually, even Esperanto's creator decided that these funny-looking letters were a bad idea, and unsuccessfully [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reformed_Esperanto tried to get rid of them.]][[/note]] However, with the widespread adoption of Unicode in digital environments today, this difficulty is much reduced; Esperanto diacritics are included in that character set.

* Baha'is were rather fond of Esperanto because they believe that a universal aŭiliary (i.e. not replacement) language is necessary to facilitate world peace. This changed after they figured that it was [[MightyWhitey too Euro-centric]]. Nowadays, they're more fond of [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lojban Lojban]], a derivative of [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loglan Loglan]].