THE ESPERANTO PORTAL
La Portalo pri Esperanto
Esperanto is the most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language in the world. Its name derives from Doktoro Esperanto, the pseudonym under which L. L. Zamenhof published the first book detailing Esperanto, the Unua Libro, in 1887. The word esperanto means 'one who hopes' in the language itself. Zamenhof's goal was to create an easy and flexible language that would serve as a universal second language to foster peace and international understanding.
Esperanto has had continuous usage for over a century by a community now estimated at about 2 million speakers, and approximately one thousand native speakers. However, no country has adopted the language officially. Today, Esperanto is employed in world travel, correspondence, cultural exchange, conventions, literature, language instruction, television, and radio broadcasting. Also, there is an Esperanto Wikipedia with over 234,800 articles (as of November 15, 2016).
There is evidence that learning Esperanto may provide a good foundation for learning languages in general. Some state education systems offer basic instruction and elective courses in Esperanto. Esperanto is also the language of instruction in one university, the Akademio Internacia de la Sciencoj in San Marino.
Free on-line courses to teach the international language are available through lernu.net and duolingo.com. The first of these sites has over 232,000 registered users, who are able to view the site's interface in their choice of 18 languages. About 47,000 of the lernu.net users possess a basic, intermediate or advanced understanding of Esperanto. On March 25, 2016, when the Duolingo Esperanto course completed its beta-testing phase, that course had 350,000 people registered to learn Esperanto through the medium of English; in seven months, the number of learners has increased to 603,000.
Duolingo has also released a preliminary Esperanto course for which the language of instruction is Spanish; public beta testing began in October of 2016. Over 5,300 students are currently beta-testing the course.
Article of the month - December
Monata artikolo - decembro
Esperanto literature began before the official publication of the constructed language Esperanto; the language's creator, L. L. Zamenhof, translated poetry and prose into the language as he was developing it as a test of its completeness and expressiveness, and published several translations and a short original poem as an appendix to the first book on the language, Unua Libro.
Over 25,000 books in Esperanto have been published, and the largest Esperanto book service at the World Esperanto Association offers over 4,000 books in its catalog. Over 100 original novels have been published in Esperanto, plus a larger number of novellas, short story collections, and poetry collections. Find out more...
Vocabulary of the month - December
Monata vortlisto - decembro
Solar System (sunsistemo)
Planets:
- Merkuro meaning: "Mercury"
- Venuso meaning: "Venus"
- Tero meaning: "Earth"
- Marso meaning: "Mars"
- Jupitero meaning: "Jupiter"
- Saturno meaning: "Saturn"
- Urano meaning: "Uranus"
- Neptuno meaning: "Neptune"
Also:
- Suno meaning: "Sun"
- Luno meaning: "Moon"
Grammar of the month - December
Monata gramatiko - decembro
In Esperanto, there is no grammatical gender. There is only one definite article: la = "the", which never changes, regardless of affixes on the noun it modifies. Also, there is no indefinite article, so kato = "cat" or kato = "a cat", depending on the context.
Categories
Kategorioj
Culture · Dictionaries
Education · Esperantido
Esperantists · History
Language · Literature
Media · Native speakers
Organizations
Esperanto resources
Rimedoj pri Esperanto
Here are some online resources:
Did you know...
Ĉu vi scias...
- ...that Neutral Moresnet, a European territory located between Germany, Belgium, and the Netherlands from 1816 to 1919, had proposed the use of Esperanto as its official language?
- ...that Hungarians may elect among several languages when taking their university entrance exams and that Esperanto is the fourth language on the list?
- ...that Wikipedia in Esperanto (Vikipedio) is one of the few Wikipedias with over 150,000 articles?
- ...that the article "Esperanto" has been chosen as a Featured article in nine languages: Esperanto, French, Finnish, German, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Russian, and Swedish?
Things you can do
Kiel vi povas helpi
Here are some Esperanto tasks:
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