Esperanto at Stanford University

What is Esperanto? The International Language!

What is Esperanto?

Very briefly, Esperanto is a full language invented in 1887 with goals, among others, of being easy to learn and to be everyone's second language. (Excerpted from English FAQ at Esperanto.Org.)

Of course, being a full language in which people live, love and laugh, it gets a bit more complicated than that. Strangely, many people come to Esperanto after hearing something weird about it. Isn't Esperanto “neutral” or a “communist plot” or “dead”? How can Esperanto have a “culture” if it doesn't have a country? Isn't having a culture contradictory to the ideals of Esperanto?

We discuss these things in class. But, check the following links and if you still have specific questions, please write to me and maybe i'll add it to a FAQ here.

Brief Note on Esperanto - by David K. JORDAN
Don HARLOW's Esperanto - an Overview, an excellent FAQ.
And here's the Prague Declaration.

There are samples of Esperanto writing on this site. Check the “reading material” in the “Other Resources” section of this website.

The best collections of links to information are available at Esperanto.Org and Esperanto.Net in lots of languages.

Esperanto.Org > Esperanto at Stanford