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1. Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0
Arulo, Blaia Zimondal, Esperantido, Europan, Idiom Neutral, Interlingua, Latinesce, Lingualumina, Lingvo Kosmopolita, Monario, Nov-Esperanto, Nov-Latin, Novial, Occidental, Optez, Pasigraphy, Ro, Romanal
Dictionary Results for Esperanto:
1. WordNet® 3.0 (2006)
Esperanto
    n 1: an artificial language based as far as possible on words
         common to all the European languages

2. The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48
Esperanto \Es`pe*ran"to\, n.
   An artificial language, intended to be universal, devised by
   Dr. Zamenhof, a Russian, who adopted the pseudonym "Dr.
   Esperanto" in publishing his first pamphlet regarding it in
   1887. The vocabulary is very largely based upon words common
   to the chief European languages, and sounds peculiar to any
   one language are eliminated. The spelling is phonetic, and
   the accent (stress) is always on the penult. A revised and
   simplified form, called Ido was developed in 1907, but
   Esperanto remained at the end of the 20th century the most
   popular artificial language designed for normal human
   linguistic communication. -- Es`pe*ran"tist, n.
   [Webster 1913 Suppl. +PJC ]

         Esperanto
         By Mark Feeney, Globe Staff, 05/12/99
         A surprising 2 million speakers worldwide get their
         words' worth from the 'planned language' created in the
         19th century
         People were thinking big in the late 19th century. They
         utopianized, they universalized, they created Zionism,
         the modern Olympics, the Socialist International.
         Thinking big back then sometimes meant thinking weird.
         Inundate the planet with a dark bubbly syrup? Try
         Coca-Cola. Chew 80 times before swallowing your food?
         Fletcherism, as the practice was called, was once more
         popular than Coke. A universal language? Say
         "Esperanto."
         Unlike Coke, Esperanto has not conquered the world.
         Unlike Fletcherism, neither has it disappeared. In the
         late 20th century, it remains on the tip of
         surprisingly many tongues.
         Esperanto? It's Greek to me: Esperanto was invented by
         Dr. Ludwig L. Zamenhof, an optometrist, in 1887. A
         Polish Jew, Zamenhof grew up in Bialystok, a city where
         Russian, Polish, German, and Yiddish were commonly
         spoken. Zamenhof had a knack for languages (he spoke
         eight, not counting Esperanto). He was also very much a
         product of his era. It occurred to him that if
         different peoples all spoke the same tongue, they might
         get along better. He decided to invent one - not a
         language to replace other languages, but one to
         supplement them, so that everyone, regardless of native
         tongue, might be able to communicate with one another.
         Zamenhof began working on his project when he was 15
         and spent 13 years perfecting it. He presented his new
         language in a book called "Dr. Esperanto's
         International Language." "Esperanto" means "one who
         hopes."
         Esperanto derives its vocabulary from various European
         languages: Latin, Greek, and Romance and Germanic
         tongues. The grammar is regular and greatly simplified.
         The spelling is phonetic, and nouns have no genders.
         Its regularity and simplicity make it easy to learn.
         "In the beginning": "En la komenco Dio kreis la cielon
         kaj teron" is the Esperanto translation of the first 10
         words from the King James Version of the Bible ("In the
         beginning God created the heavens and the earth").
         First, there was Volapuk: Esperanto is neither the
         first nor only constructed language. The idea goes back
         at least to the 17th century and the philosopher Rene
         Descartes. It derived further intellectual credence
         from the Enlightenment belief in universal systems and
         the primacy of reason. However, it wasn't until the
         late 19th century that the first constructed languages
         appeared.
         Volapuk, invented by a Catholic priest, the Rev. J. M.
         Schleyer, predates Esperanto by nearly a decade. It
         attracted several hundred thousand practitioners, but
         once the novelty wore off, Volapuk quickly lost out to
         Esperanto. Both languages eventually gave birth to
         "improved" versions, known, respectively, as Idiom
         Neutral and Ido (short for Esperandido), but neither
         really took hold.
         Other invented languages include Solresol, based on the
         musical scale; Timerio, a numerical language; Glosa, an
         attempt to create an international language using as
         few words as possible; and Interlingua, which is
         derived from English and Romance languages.
         Diego Marani, a translator for the European Council of
         Ministers in Brussels, has drawn considerable attention
         with his Europanto, a playful blend of English and
         various European languages (see sidebar).
         Lights! Camera! Esperanto!: An Esperanto film canon
         exists, albeit consisting of only one title, "Incubus,"
         a 1965 fantasy/sci-fi feature starring a pre-"Star
         Trek" William Shatner. The "Incubus" Web site
         (http://www.incubusthefilm.com) makes noises about a
         forthcoming video release, but no dates are given.
         What's so funny about peace, love, and Esperanto?:
         Elvis Costello commissioned Esperanto liner notes for
         his album "Blood and Chocolate."
         The East is Esperantist: There are an estimated 2
         million Esperantists in the world, and they live in at
         least 86 countries.
         Historically, the movement has been strongest in
         Central Europe. As Miko Sloper, director of the
         Esperanto League for North America (ELNA), points out,
         "You travel a hundred miles in any direction there and
         you might need to speak some other language to be
         understood. It's very practical to have a common
         language, and for obvious political reasons most people
         there certainly didn't want it to be Russian."
         Though the World Esperanto Association (UEA) is
         headquartered in Rotterdam, more than half the world's
         Esperanto speakers are now believed to live in China.
         The language's popularity there stems from a 40-part
         instructional series broadcast on Chinese television in
         the early '90s.
         Large pockets of Esperantists also exist in Korea and
         Japan.
         Truth, justice, and the Esperanto way: ELNA, the
         leading Esperanto organization in this country, is
         located in El Cerrito, Calif. The Bay Area is the
         closest thing America has to an Esperanto hotbed,
         thanks largely to San Francisco State University, whose
         annual Summer Esperanto Workshop celebrates its 30th
         anniversary in July.
         Locally, the Esperanto Society of New England has about
         50 members.
         One hobbit, one orc, one elf, one dwarf - one
         language?: J. R. R. Tolkien, who taught philology at
         Oxford University when not writing "The Hobbit" and
         "The Lord of the Rings," gave Esperanto his
         endorsement, sort of.
         \
         "My advice to all who have the time or inclination to
         concern themselves with the international language
         movement would be: `Back Esperanto loyally.'"
         Friends in high places: At least six Nobel Prize
         winners have been Esperantists. So was Yugloslavia's
         postwar ruler Josip Broz Tito.
         Esperanto? Ho, ho, ho: The language's image as a sort
         of verbal vegetarianism has meant that Esperanto often
         serves as a linguistic fall guy. Isaac Bashevis Singer
         once denounced modern Hebrew "as soulless Esperanto."
         Fran Lebowitz writes in one of her humor pieces, "The
         writer is to the real world what Esperanto is to the
         language world - funny, maybe, but not that funny."
         You can judge a language by its enemies: Hitler derided
         Esperanto in "Mein Kampf." Stalin labeled it "the
         language of spies." US Senator Joseph McCarthy accused
         Esperantists of being communists.
         You can judge a language by its literature: PEN, the
         international writers organization, has an Esperanto
         chapter. Some 30,000 titles have been published in the
         language. "People write novels in Esperanto," says
         Humphrey Tonkin, professor of humanities at the
         University of Hartford and past president of the UEA.
         "There's quite a lot of poetry. As with any other
         language, there are good novels and bad novels, good
         poetry and bad poetry."
         Among authors translated into Esperanto are Dante,
         Tolstoy, Goethe, Ibsen, and Sartre.
         Bill Gates does not speak Esperanto: Sun Microsystems
         originally advertised its Java computing system as "the
         Esperanto of computer languages."
         Then again, maybe he does: The number of Esperanto Web
         sites - for instance, there's
         http://esperanto.wunderground.com, which offers weather
         forecasts in Esperanto - would suggest the language has
         a disproportionately high following among the digerati.
         "It kind of makes intuitive sense, " says Sloper, that
         people who use artificial languages on-screen would be
         intrigued by an artificial language in the rest of
         their lives (actually, Esperantists prefer the term
         "planned language").
         David Wolff, an Acton software engineer who's the
         president of ELNA, agrees. "Programmers are used to
         looking for solutions to things, looking for ways to
         fix problems, and looking especially for ways that are
         inexpensive and effective. Esperanto is that kind of a
         solution. You follow simple rules. It's easy to get
         into and to learn it, and it clearly solves a specific
         kind of problem."
         Waiting for the "fina venko": "We're still a little
         club, in a way, and there's a camaraderie to that,"
         says Sloper.
         "Esperantists speak of the `fina venko,' or `final
         victory.' The concept is that eventually every
         moderately educated person on the earth will know
         Esperanto enough to, say, be able to order a cup of
         coffee in it. Is that going to happen? I don't really
         care. It would be nice if everyone knew Esperanto, but
         already there are enough people who do so that we have
         a community.
         "There are directories of Esperantists all over the
         world, and when someone is traveling to a foreign
         country it will frequently happen that an Esperantist
         will write or e-mail a fellow Esperantist and be
         invited to stay in his home. Does that happen with
         people who speak just English? I don't think so."
                                                  --Mark Feeney
   [This story ran on page F01 of the Boston Globe on 05/12/99.
   Copyright 1999 Globe Newspaper Company.] (available at
   http://www.esne.net/ligoj/boston_globe_article.htm)
   [PJC]

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