A language was created to bridge communication between individuals from different countries. In its use for over a hundred years, Esperanto has proven to be a truly living language, capable of expressing various aspects of human thought.
Esperanto is an artificial language created by Ludovich Zamenhoff, a Pole. The name “Esperanto” is the pseudonym of L.L. Zamenhof himself when he published his language in 1887.
Zamenhof’s main goal was to create a neutral language that was easy to learn and use as an intermediary language by people with different native languages.
Linguistically, Esperanto is neither superior nor inferior to other languages, whether artificial or not. Some of the advantages that Esperanto has over other languages include:
- A neutral language: since it is not the native language of anyone in the world, it is considered to belong equally to everyone (although Esperanto gives an advantage to people who use the Latin alphabet over, for example, speakers of Chinese or Arabic).
- A relatively easy language to learn: based on the testimonials of its users and anecdotal evidence, Esperanto is about five times easier for English speakers to learn than Spanish, ten times easier than Russian, and “much easier” than Chinese, Japanese, or Arabic.
Features of the Esperanto language:
- A consistent spelling system: Unlike Chinese, which requires years to memorize the relationship between characters and their pronunciation, or English, which has many inconsistencies in its spelling, Esperanto, like Indonesian, has a one-letter-one-sound system, making it very easy to learn.
- Consistent grammar with no exceptions: By mastering just sixteen short grammar rules, one can already construct correct, useful, and meaningful sentences in Esperanto.
- An easy-to-learn system for creating words from other words: by mastering only about 500 words (basic words, particles, affixes), one can easily expand their vocabulary to include technical terms. Although Esperanto generally has a fairly large unique basic vocabulary (around 9000 words), many of these are simply synonyms of words that can be constructed from the five hundred basic words mentioned above, and it is often recommended (and usually considered more elegant) to construct words yourself rather than use existing ones.
REGISTRATION
Register now, as seats are limited. Registration forms can be picked up and submitted at: Universitas Widyatama Anniversary Committee, IT Center, Rectorate Building, 3rd Floor, Room A301, no later than November 16, 2009.
