Meet Esperanto, one of the most successful conlangs in existence.
Esperanto is a international auxilary conlang created by L.L. Zamenhof on July 26 1887... 1887 (as a hobby, neography has a long history). The name is derived from the Doktoro Esperanto, which is the pseudonym under which Zamenhof published the book Unua Libro, a book detailing what we now know as Esperanto. "Esperanto" in itself means "one who hopes". This makes sense, as Zamenhof's goal was to create a simple language that could be learned by people from multiple ethnic backgrounds. He planned on achieving this by combining aspects from multiple languages, so Esperanto would seem familiar to multiple speakers. Esperanto incorporates vocabulary from Romance and Germanic languages while maintaining Slavic grammar concepts.
Fast forward to modern day where around two million people speak Esperanto to some degree, while around two thousand of those speakers speak Esperanto natively, from birth. Esperanto even has its own organisation (The World Esperanto Association) that holds members in 120 countries spread across Europe, East Asia and South America. Furthermore, the language also has its own Youth Organisation, and mulitple "World Congresses", the first of which was opened in France in 1905.
No countries officially use Esperanto as their national language. However, the conlang was reccomended by the French Academy of Sciences in 1921, & officially recognised by UNESCO (The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organisation) in 1954. Esperanto is even the language of instruction at the International Academy of Sciences in San Marino.
Some even say Esperanto will be able to compete with English as the primary language of the world, as it is much easier to learn than the latter.
So will Esperanto become the next global language? With China, Japan and South Korea entering the global economy as huge players, along with India's rising influence (ex: Bollywood), it may be hard to encourage the use of a heavily European based conlang. However, as the evidence presented has stated, it's fairly easy to learn! Who knows! Maybe one day, we will all eat, sleep and breathe Esperanto.
Hats off to you L.L. Zamenhof.
Wanna learn Esperanto?
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