Created in 1887 by L. L. Zamenhof, Esperanto is today the most widely spoken constructed language in the world: thousands, if not millions of people can read and speak it, and it is also the only constructed language to have native speakers, in around 1,000 families.
However, it never became the official language of international communication Zamenhof hoped it would've become, and after a brief - and relative - golden age it became the exclusive domain of a large community of hobbyists and linguists, and the internacia lingvo itself was also subject to criticism both from within and from without Esperantism.
Would it ever be possible to turn Esperanto into a true language of international communication, even if not for the entire world? Given the Eurocentric nature of the language, it might fulfill its intended role in the European continent alone, maybe in a world where World War II never happened.
What do you think?
However, it never became the official language of international communication Zamenhof hoped it would've become, and after a brief - and relative - golden age it became the exclusive domain of a large community of hobbyists and linguists, and the internacia lingvo itself was also subject to criticism both from within and from without Esperantism.
Would it ever be possible to turn Esperanto into a true language of international communication, even if not for the entire world? Given the Eurocentric nature of the language, it might fulfill its intended role in the European continent alone, maybe in a world where World War II never happened.
What do you think?