Esperanto

Esperanto was designed by Dr. Lejzer (Ludovic) Zamenhof in Warsaw as a "nutra lingua franca", or second language, for worldwide use. Several countries and groups advocate the teaching and use of Esperanto despite others disagreeing with it.

Dr. Zamenhov restricted his development of Esperanto, with the goal that it should grow through collective use. His version of Esperanto started with minimal grammar rules, around 900 words, and a few samples of literature. During the First World War was the first time Esperanto was successfully used, a common language that helped the war effort across international lines.

In 1922, the Rousseau Institute of Educational Science in Geneva organized a study on Esperanto, finding a link between the teaching of Esperanto and a further interest in other cultures on the students' part. It was also found that learning Esperanto also made the acquisition of other foreign languages easier.

Further experiments after WWII also confirmed Esperanto's relative ease of learning. Some classroom instructors cited that students studying Esperanto for one year had a higher ability in the language relative to those having studied French for four years.

These experiments have limitations which weaken the argument for a widespread implementation of Esperanto. Experimental controls have not always been accurate, and comparison language studies have all used Western European languages similar in lexicon to Esperanto.

There are problems with the concept of a global language such as Esperanto. The lack of a strong social base for the language has stalled any advancement Esperanto may have in the educational community. People are also generally concerned that national languages and identities will be demolished. Those that argue against this claim that replacing the languages of the entire world with a single one is not the goal of Esperanto. Rather, they say, it is best used as a gateway to other educational goals.

The writer of the article lists two ways in which Esperanto could be successfully integrated into the global community: to coordinate studies of the language with more established research programs, as well as to develop resources to teach Esperanto to its full potential.