soc_puppet | Esperanto: The Language of Hope

Got to give this in class after all! Sharing it here as well, because why not.

Esperanto: The Language of Hope

Saluton! Mia nomo estas Soĉan, kaj mi amas Esperanton. Or, in English, Hello! My name is Socchan, and I love the language Esperanto. Esperanto is a constructed language originally created in 1887 by a man named L. L. Zamenhof, designed to be an easy to learn second language. I’ve been studying Esperanto on and off for several years, and today I’m going to tell you why it was created, why learning a new language is beneficial, and why you should consider learning Esperanto specifically.

Let’s start by looking back to Esperanto’s origins. L. L. Zamenhof grew up in a town in Poland, where several different languages were spoken, and many disagreements broke out due to a lack of understanding. Zamenhof thought that, if only they all shared at least one language, perhaps they could communicate better and fewer conflicts would result. Unfortunately, learning a whole new language tends to be an arduous task at best. With this in mind, Zamenhof decided to create his own language: one that would be easy to learn.

Zamenhof’s goal of fostering peace through better communication was and remains a noble one, perpetuated by Esperantists to this day, but there are perks to learning a new language that he didn’t know. As some of you are already aware, learning a new language can have many benefits. Scientific Origin tells us that learning a new language can improve your memory, delay cognitive decline, and promote cultural awareness—the latter of which we’ve been studying the importance of in this very class. Jennifer Smith of Omniglot.com also points out that learning another language can improve your job prospects. Studying a language that’s easy to learn can mean accessing some of those benefits that much sooner.

This makes Esperanto an ideal choice when picking a new language to learn. With his hope of creating a simple, easy to learn language, Zamenhof made Esperanto with only sixteen main grammatical rules, which can be found listed at the Esperanto Society of Chicago’s website. In comparison, the website All English says that English is estimated to have around 3,500 grammatical rules. In another advantage over English, each letter in Esperanto also has only one pronunciation (though some vowels do team up to form dipthongs). On top of that, if you already know a European language, such as English, Esperanto has many cognates. Even better, there are plenty of free resources available to learn Esperanto, a good number of which can be found at Esperanto.net.

Learning Esperanto can connect you to over a hundred thousand speakers around the world, studying a new language can help your brain stay healthy and active, and Esperanto in particular was made to be easy to learn in the hope of fostering peace and communication. For all of these reasons and more, when it comes to picking a new language to learn, it's well worth consideration. Ni lernus Esperanton! Let’s learn Esperanto!

Works Cited

Perry, Cassidy. “15 Cognitive Benefits of Learning a New Language.” https://scientificorigin.com/15-cognitive-benefits-of-learning-a-new-language, accessed July 23, 2025.

Smith, Jennifer. “The benefits of learning a second language.” https://www.omniglot.com/language/articles/benefitsoflearningalanguage.htm, accessed July 23, 2025.

Cid, Emilio. “Learn Esperanto.” https://esperanto.net/en/learn-esperanto/, accessed July 23, 2025.

Zervic, Christopher. “The 16 Rules of Esperanto, compared with English.” https://esperanto-chicago.org/the-16-rules-of-esperanto-compared-with-english/, accessed July 23, 2025.

Ericupsidebrown. “How Many Grammar Rules Are There in the English Language?” https://allenglish.com/how-many-grammar-rules-are-there-in-the-english-language/, accessed July 23, 2025.